Listen to the Whispers
by T.S. Blue
Summary: Small towns tell tall tales. Which of them should be listened to and which left to die in dark corners? Rated T for mild language and just to be safe. Complete.
1. Right Behind You

_**Author's Note:** Must be Monday._

_As always seems to happen, this here story started out as one experiment, ended up as another. These things have a way of dictating what they want to be._

_Relevant canon: This takes place sometime in the late first season. It references (in passing) both _High Octane_ and _Swamp Molly_. It also borrows Chief Lacey from _Deputy Dukes_ (and sort of references that episode, too) but puts him in Sweetwater County (which he was chief of in _The Ghost of General Lee_) instead of Springville. Why? Because I liked the sound of Sweetwater. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. _

_It also borrows Claridge County and a few of its unsavory residents from season three. In this case I figure that although we didn't learn about these characters until later, they were always around. Besides, I have a habit of taking what I like and leaving the rest behind._

_And that's about it. Except that whole not owning/not earning thing that y'all can recite in your sleep._

_Cheers!_

* * *

**Chapter One -- Right Behind You**

Whispers and murmurs, the domain of women. If Duke men miss them, they can't be faulted; they are deaf to gentle, delicate notes. Long ago their ears got honed to an engine's hum. Pitch and tone, they know the second something goes awry, so long as it's mechanical. Human voices confound them unless they are raised.

Daisy should have heard the whispers.

* * *

A scheme, a plot, there's a reason Luke should mastermind those, and not only because he's not interested in being the errand-boy.

"Come on," ran the extent of Bo's persuasion. "I'll be right behind you." A faded shade of the truth, a not quite white lie, more like yellow hope. "I just have to pick up Penny first."

Because 'right behind' would have put Bo here on Miss Minnie's front porch, listening to her tell tall tales of liquor runs and loving under canopies of live oaks, lazy afternoons of skinny dipping. A page out of Luke's own youth, but there's no way he wants to picture the wrinkled spinster in front of him enjoying those same activities; not if, as she hints, Uncle Jesse was a willing participant.

"Those were the days," she sighs again, and he chooses to believe the stories are some warped form of make-believe, the child's games of a woman who never grew up enough to marry and settle into reality.

"Yes, Ma'am," he agrees anyway, because he reckons it'll keep everything moving along. "There was some things you wanted me to take over to the rummage sale?" Daisy's fault, responsibility for this mess ultimately falls at his female cousin's feet. Where she'd likely stomp it with that two inch pointed heel on her right foot. Duty to family and community, she'd point out. And if there were ever two boys that needed to spend some time in civilization, it would be him and Bo. A fundraiser of a sale, and a sweet old lady that needs help lugging the decrepit mementoes of a faded past to where they can be sold for a good cause. Ashamed, embarrassed – Luke ought to feel the fool for balking at being helpful.

"Trinkets," the spinster answers, hand over her heart, eyes closed, face lifted to the sun. "From a better time. Nothing an old lady should hold onto. For young people just starting out, they'll be treasures." Her eyes come open, alert and sharp. Studying him and, "You kind of favor your uncle, you know," just goes to prove she's crazy. Looking to some ancient, fantasized past where she and Jesse (who never looked a whit like Luke – he was raised on the family photo albums and ought to know) were sweethearts.

A smile, because it's not nice to make fun of the daft, and he says, "You just show me where them things are, Ma'am, so's I can get them loaded up." And get out of here, back to the dirt roads of Hazzard, where Rosco's antics will seem downright sane in comparison to the odd darkness on this here half-rotten porch. Out where Bo's likely showing off new aerial maneuvers for his girl of the week, counting minutes until he reckons Luke's done all the heavy lifting. Or maybe it wasn't work that his clever cousin ran away from this time. Could be that he believed the hushed words spoken in quiet corners whenever Miss Minnie came away from her barely-standing house on this overgrown and dark property. About how she didn't have two clear thoughts to rub together for warmth, and if she did, she'd only singe herself on them anyway.

Either way, shiny Penny, Bo's new toy, with her flowing blonde hair and adoring blue eyes, is no doubt getting treated to a thrill ride that is carefully timed to be sure to miss the real fun, right here at Miss Minnie's.

Bony hand over Luke's heart now, head tipped-back, tinkle of a laugh that flatters him into thinking he's just come out with the most charmingly amusing words ever. Goes tripping back over his own thoughts, can't imagine what it would have been, but he smiles back at her perfect white teeth, matching white hair pulled back into a tidy bun. Once upon a time she might have been pretty, and maybe, just maybe turned Uncle Jesse's head. His head, but no other part of him, because no matter how many women whisper of the lost long love of one Jesse Duke, Luke will forever believe that the man only loved one of them, and she's gone now.

"Sugar," she says, and it's flirtatious and grandmotherly all in one, "everything's loaded. You just got to cart it over there and let Saul Keenan take care of it at the other end. When I asked for you boys to help, I didn't mean to put you out none. I just needed a driver."

Well. Intentions got lost in translation then. Because the early morning was spent under the old Duke work truck, changing the oil, tweaking the spark plugs and otherwise tuning it well enough to run it out here.

"Oh, my," comes out as an old lady sigh. "Bo's not here," appears to be a startling realization on her part. Proof, maybe, that she's not firing on all cylinders. Females in Hazzard always note, right off, when a certain oversized blonde with a colossal ego is absent from the scene. Pouting countenances and furtive mumblings follow, debating where the pretty Duke is, when he might arrive, and who will catch his eye when he gets there. But Miss Minnie, she's been too busy seeing an old man when she looks at Luke, and imagining Bo where he's obviously not. "How are you going to drive both trucks?"

Instinct brings his hand to the back of his head, fingers mussing the curls there. Thoughts and logic are needed here, and Miss Minnie's in short supply. "You got a truck loaded up somewhere?" It's a backward stumble perhaps, but those are necessary when trying to find solid footing in the slippery mud of a doddering old mind.

A tsk, a shaking head, and he's four again. Disappointing the adults by being such a childish fool, because of course there's a loaded truck. Somewhere, just nowhere obvious. "Yes, sugar. In the barn." Which a stiff wind could reduce into splinters; in fact, could be that if there's really a truck in there, it's the sole support for the structure. "Dear, dear. Daisy said you boys would both come. Now what are you going to do?"

Kill Bo. It's the first thing that comes to mind, but there are punishments worse than death.

"How much stuff you got, ma'am?" A truck in the barn, and since he can't see through wood, there's no telling whether it's a pickup or a semi, whether it's full of feathers or bricks. Doesn't matter, when lifting and carrying time comes, Bo's doing the lion's share.

A grip on his elbow, surprisingly tight, and the woman's distressed. Not quite swooning, but then he's not Jesse, just a poor substitute. Only half of the damsel-in-distress dramatics are necessary. "Now, sweetie," which only goes to show that Miss Minnie's marbles went missing long ago. No one has mistaken Luke Duke for being sweet, not since before he went to war, years ago. "Don't you get fool ideas. Why, it took Jacob a whole day to pack that up for me." Which doesn't mean much, not without knowing who this Jacob is, and whether he's the type to con an old lady into paying him a day's work that ought only take an hour.

"Bo will be along directly." There's more to the thought, about how his kid cousin needs to earn his keep, and it won't hurt Penny a lick to lean back on the General's windshield and watch two shirtless Duke boys do some heavy work. But the grip on his elbow tightens, and those foggy gray-green eyes in front of him come clear again. He's being directed, escorted, dragged right off to the building in question.

"Fine, fine," feels to him an awful lot like someone being deliberately dense. Though Minnie has no need to act the part, what with being a natural and all. "You can just leave your truck here, then, and he can pick it up. I'll tell him you went on ahead."

Frail fingers pull at the barn doors, and Luke's clearly a clod. He steps up then, lifts the latch, shoves until the doors swing wide, and there's a panel truck.

"Packed up nice and snug like a bug in a rug," Minnie informs him, and he reckons she would know, being a bit buggy herself. "No need for you to go putting yourself out rearranging nothing. Jacob, he's a good boy, and it's just a shame he couldn't be here to drive the truck. But he's a working boy, a working boy." Sing-song, never recognizing that the words could be taken badly by a man who works hard, but never punches a clock. Then again, the pride of her tone jars something in him, a recognition or memory that never quite comes clear before sliding away from the forefront of his mind again. "Anyway, he did what he could, and all I need from you now is to get this here truck to Saul. He'll take care of it at the other end."

The other end, which most days is as attainable as over the rainbow to Duke boys. In Sweetwater County, with its wide fields and rolling hills, and along its border with Claridge, the river from which it gets its name. Cold, clear water he and Bo used to drink on long hunts along its banks, but that was when Dukes ran free. Before probation, pacts with the government, and county lines became impermeable. Papers, signed by a probation officer, are what it takes to get him there now, and those are tucked away in his pocket. He reckons it'll feel pretty good to get out on the Sweetwater's roads, even if it is only to drive an old lady's junk to a rummage sale. A good cause, funds for a pediatric wing of Tri-County Hospital. What the heck, he might as well be on his way.

"Keys inside?" he asks, gets a demure little nod and a lip biting smile as an answer. Flirting with Jesse by proxy, most likely, as if Luke is a willing vessel to carry her misguided love home with him. "When Bo comes along," he instructs, losing no time in strutting the length of the truck, then stepping up into it. "Just tell him to come on ahead to Sweetwater. Him and me can come back later and pick up the work truck." No need to complicate an already confused situation.

"All right, Luke," comes from too close. Sidling, slipping up on him; for such a frail thing Miss Minnie can move pretty quickly. She reaches up to pat his knee as he settles into the overly bouncy seat. "You just drive straight there, now, and don't worry about a thing."

He considers the oddness of the notion that any Duke would worry when they were behind the wheel of a moving vehicle as he signals for her to take a step back. Starts the engine, throws it into reverse, and the second it starts to move, anything close to concern leaves his mind in deference to the feel of freedom under his hands. A last wave to a well-meaning spinster whose head got lost somewhere in nineteen fifty-two or so, and he's on his way. Out of the dark hollow where vines hang low, clawing for the windshield, up and into the sun's glow. It's not such a bad day after all, and once this little errand is complete, and all good deeds are done, he reckons fishing might be in order. Bo will tire of his shiny Penny after a couple of hours and join him there on the bank of Hound Dog Lake, casting reels and wasting time. Not a bad day at all, now that things are moving along.

Illogical, not possible, though his mind insists on churning through the notion anyway, about how Claridge County's dust is that much thicker, redder, downright dirtier. Choking sensation as he drives through, slick tires of a borrowed truck loaded down with unwanted souvenirs kicking up more particles than even the deep treads of the General would, and he wishes for a window to close or even a door to shut against the onslaught. He reckons it's penance for letting Bo outsmart him, and figures that payback will come in the form of pushing those pink, pinchable cheeks right in front of Miss Minnie and letting her have at it. After all, pretty-boy probably perfectly resembles the spinster's faulty memories of a young Jesse anyway.

A dark mood that has him wanting to throw his baby cousin to the wolves, but it lifts and scatters to the wind when he crosses into Sweetwater. Grateful again for the open-air design of this vehicle, freshly-turned-dirt smell to the world, sun burning a souvenir of itself into his left cheek and forearm, and he can just about hear the whirring spin of his reel, feel the tug and pull, see the catfish at the end of his line. Almost there, and there are sirens.

Heart, breath, foot, these parts of him react first. A spring coiled through the center of him releases, and the blood rushes hot under his skin, like a fever. Heartbeat pounding in his ears, rhythm suggesting high-speed flight.

But it's Sweetwater, where cops are clean. Straightforward enforcers of law, and Chief Lacey in that cruiser back there no doubt reckons he's got himself a parole violation. Simple enough to set to rights, papers in his pocket will put them both at ease, then he can move on. Good deed of the day done, and he'll be on his back by noon, watching clouds while his fishing pole does all the work. So he drifts her easy onto the grassy shoulder, rolling to a stop and kicking the emergency brake.

"Hello, Luke," he gets greeted by the Sweetwater Chief. "Shut her down, would you? License and registration."

Rhythm like the annoying click of a blinker that didn't get turned off; funny how much of his life's been punctuated with those words.

"Morning," he answers back, digging into his rear pocket for his wallet. "I can give you the license, but I don't know about the registration. The truck ain't mine."

"Now, Luke, you have the right to remain silent," Lacey says, and the tension in his voice stops Luke cold. Hands up, though no one's asked him to surrender. Face calm, he looks the lawman directly in the eye.

"I got permission from my parole officer to be here," he says, trying to shield himself with the truth, but there's no point.

"Keep those hands up," Sweetwater Sheriff Walker's voice suddenly comes from passenger side. A gun, standard issue, is raised out there, pointing straight at him.

"I'm sure you do, Luke," Lacey consoles. Seems like all of this would be a lot easier to tolerate back in Hazzard, where Rosco yells and labels him riff-raff, rather than here where the law calls him by name and shakes its head in sorrow and good boys gone astray. "Step out, please." He could turn the key, slam his foot down on the gas. Sheriff Walker over there isn't any more interested in shooting him than he is in being shot. He'd probably get out of here, but not for long. This here truck was not built to be a getaway car. So when the chief steps aside to make room for him, he just puts one foot in front of the other until he's standing on grass and gravel. "But you just admitted about how you don't own this here vehicle. And it's been reported stolen."

"Stolen?" It's an outburst worthy of Bo Duke. Too loud, too fast, almost sounds like a guilty man's denial, even to his own ears.

"You have the right to remain silent," Lacey informs him in between the jingling clank of handcuffs getting pulled from the clip on his belt. A glance around, and there's a whole posse of deputies here, too. All right, so it's only two, but in these parts that's practically an army's worth of men to make sure that one Luke Duke gets taken into custody.

"It ain't stolen," he protests. "It's borrowed. From Mi—from Minerva Jordan." Formality seems important here; if Lukas K. Duke is about to be fingerprinted and booked, stands to reason he needs to give full names of witnesses who can get him released.

"Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law," is just a droning hum that continues under his protestations. He's spun around, right hand yanked behind his back. Cold metal there, three clicks and it's tight against the bone. Left joins it captivity, and he's getting patted down. "You have the right to an attorney."

"Letter from my probation officer is in my right front pocket," he informs the deputy that seems to be getting a touch personal with his legs. "It's the only thing I'm armed with." Well, other than his bowie knife, which has already been unclipped from his belt.

His rights keep getting rumbled into his ear until he's declared clean and turned around to face the Chief again. "Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you?"

Understand? Not at all. And perfectly.

"Yes," he sighs. "I also got a right to know what I'm being charged with."

"Grand theft auto, for starts." Sheriff and Chief stand side-by-side now, glancing together at some papers.

"Don't tell me." Sudden flash of insight and Luke can't wait to share. "It belongs to Boss Hogg." Bitter is the sound of those words, and the taste in his mouth. But then, that can be blamed on the way his skin crawls against the metal confines on his wrists.

"Nope," comes from the beaming Sheriff. Oh, he's caught him one Duke boy, and in a county where he's just a peon until old Chief Lacey there retires, this is just a banner day for the round little man. Round head, round body and even his pudgy hands, which take the registration back from his boss, have a sort of circular shape to them. Every county has its heavy-set lawman, and Walker is Sweetwater's. "Jacob Jordan. You picked the wrong truck to steal, boy."

Everything in him screams to defend himself against this smug accusation, to be Bo and charge down what threatens him, stand tall over it, look down on it and just maybe even spit. But he's not Bo, and Lacey's doing plenty of glowering for them both.

"That's enough, Bob. The boy asked what the charges were, not for your opinion of them. But Luke," he says over the thrum of Luke's heart and the whine of cars passing on the highway to the south, and he's not proud or self-righteous. He's just as sad eyed as Uncle Jesse always got right before he pulled out the strap to punish wayward boys. "You admitted it's not your truck. We don't need your permission to search it."

Search what's packed up as snug and a bug in a rug, and Luke's stomach curls into itself. "I don't know what's in there," comes out as a plea, not wise. Sounds like an admission of – something. Not so much guilt as complete foolishness, unforgivable indiscretion. Because Dukes have been guilty before, but they've always been smart about it. This time he's an innocent idiot.

A click of keys, the clank of doors getting swung wide, giant eyes of deputies that are likely day-hire boys, unaccustomed to genuine crime-solving.

The whine of traffic has changed, the pitch climbing only to drop with each shift of gears. Familiar tone, recognizable hum.

"No," he mutters, but it's useless. Long about the time that one bottle of moonshine clinks against another as it's being pulled from the back of the truck, the General skids to a halt. Here, finally, comes Bo.

* * *

It's instinct, animal. About as smart as a jackass, really, but someone's got to do something.

"Just wait a dang minute!" He's not even fully out of the car yet, hands sliding across smooth metal of the roof as he fights to pull himself out. On a good day, he can be up from the driver's seat and on the ground in one fluid movement that takes less than a second. But Luke's in handcuffs, passive, while men in blue lift clear jugs of moonshine into the air. Evidence, no doubt, that has been planted there by one fat County Commissioner dressed in white. This is not a good day.

"Bo." That's his cool, collected cousin, calming him down. Or trying, but it's a fool's errand that Luke's on. (Not half as foolish as the one that got him into this mess, the one Bo left him to without a second thought, because he had a girl to impress, because Luke could handle it alone. Because Bo Duke was a selfish brat.)

"No, Luke," he answers the words that his cousin doesn't even have to say. "I ain't gonna settle down. This here's a frame up and he," there his finger goes, jabbing at Chief Lacey as if he's Rosco, like the Sweetwater law is in on it, "knows it." But of course, Sweetwater's a straight county, one of the few in the region. All Lacey knows about crooked law comes in the form of rumor and conjecture; whispers from behind the hand about how a once-decent sheriff could be bought for a cut of the take and a poor substitute for friendship. Lacey _knows_ nothing, except that those are bottles of moonshine being pulled from a truck that Luke was driving.

Bo's on his feet now, marching closer to where his cousin's being held for a crime he never committed, or maybe the whole scene is stepping up toward him. Certainly there are men in ill-fitting uniforms advancing in his direction. Deputies-for-a-day, he and Luke know all about that kind, having been sworn in that way themselves, and not that long ago, either. Seems like most of that day was spent with his heart doing calisthenics against his rib cage, while he grinned a confidence that he didn't really feel out into the world. Acted tough and if he jostled the killer he'd been deputized to transport, if he shoved and threatened, if he raised his weapon too quickly and without taking proper aim first, it was only because he was doing a job he had no business doing, driving Rocky Marlowe from here to there. Just like the men in front of him, blustering and reaching for their holsters.

"Bo!" penetrates the sound of blood rushing through his ears on its way down to where his fists have clenched. His eyes follow the voice; lock onto the forced calm of Luke's face. His cousin's arms clasped awkwardly behind his back, making his shoulder muscles all the more rigid, he's sweating and he's scared, but those blue eyes never waver. Capturing all of Bo's attention in the same gentle way he'd catch a butterfly in his hands, even as the rest of him is taut with the desire to fight. "Don't."

Quiet, nothing more than birds and scuffling feet as the deputies stop where they are. Something in the near-whispered authority of Luke makes them all listen, eavesdropping on a word meant for Bo alone.

"I'll be all right," is a bluff the likes of which would make an old gambler proud. An older cousin, a leader, a man in up to his neck and sinking fast, but Luke's determined to go down alone.

"No," Bo growls, bravado to mask his own fear. "This ain't right. We ain't—" deep breath, burning against his throat, but there's no time for his own pain. "Luke ain't done nothing wrong," he tells Lacey. Reasonable man, always has been. Tolerates Bo stepping up closer to him, even if the other lawmen around tighten ranks. Prepared to answer any false move he may make, to throw him to the ground where they'd take great pleasure in leaving bruises behind as they cuffed him, no doubt.

"'Morning, Bo," is just out of place. Except it's not really. Spoken in a firm voice, steadfast, reminding every last man (and woman, Penny's back there in the General – at least he hopes she hasn't followed him out here, but he can't spare a glance in her direction to be sure) on this stretch of blacktop who is in charge here. "Luke here is under arrest, and it's up to a jury to see to whether he's guilty or not. You are free to go." _So go_. The man doesn't even have to say it.

"Bo," reigns him in, pulls him closer, regardless of overeager deputies. They disappear from his focus, which is limited to the compassionate blue eyes in front of him. "Go on. Ain't nothing you can do for me." But that's not true, he can fight for his older cousin, same as Luke's always fought for him. Must flash across his face, what he wants to do, because there's a head shake, then, "You got to take her home." Slight tip of a chin, reminding him that there's a girl back there that's counting on him, but dang it all, she could get herself home. She could just rev the General right up and drive back to Hazzard or off to Atlanta and it wouldn't matter one bit which way she went. Not when it's moonshine Luke's accused of transporting, not when it's ten years he's facing. A sentence imposed on them both, when it comes right down to it – Luke to prison, and Bo to loneliness. "You got to go find Jesse and Daisy, tell them what happened."

Subtext, hidden words underneath what gets spoken. About how Bo needs to look after their girl cousin and aging uncle like Luke would, were he not about to disappear into the prison system for a decade or so. About how a torch is being passed right here on this dusty stretch of highway at the intersection of nowhere and nothingness, from older cousin to younger. About how he needs to keep his chin up. Dang hard to comply.

"Luke," comes out one more time, whispered regret and sorrow.

Those eyes stay fixed on him, steady, strength there cloaking pain and fear. "Go on," Luke says, and leaves out that other word, the one Bo hears in his tone anyway. _Please._

A nod is all he can manage, what with how the effort to swallow away tears means that any words he might say go down the drain too. Declarations of how he'll never let Luke go to prison, how these trumped up charges could never stick, and that if it comes right down to it, how he'll find a way to get himself charged too, because there's no way he'll ever let Luke go down alone. Reminders of how much Luke is loved.

But then, there are words that never make it out of Luke's mouth either. Like how he's scared half to death.

So, with a deep-seated knowledge that he's a coward and a rat, Bo turns back to the General, slides in the window and starts him up. Backs away from the scene as he watches his big cousin get led toward the waiting seat of a police cruiser.


	2. Nowhere Near as Noble as the Intentions

**Chapter Two - Nowhere Near as Noble as the Intentions**

Like wind through autumn oak leaves, the susurration begins, swells, balloons into fully-voiced concerns. Builds to a roar then overflows with the rush of a waterfall. Insinuation piled on top of innuendo until the tales are so tall that their tops are lost in the clouds.

But it all starts with a shared truth. It was only a month ago that the Duke family went back on their word, making moonshine that they called fuel. Oh, the excuses and reasons for reneging on their vow were so righteous as to defy rebuke, but in the end what was bottled was nowhere near as noble as the intentions. One-eighty proof whiskey in the gas tank, and a hair-thin escape from a revenuer. And they lived to run another day.

Or another week, because it was no more than one church sermon later that those boys were caught running – something – for Molly Perrine from down there in the depths of swamp. Some said it was just 'shine while others insisted it was guns and then there were those that swore it was drugs, but it didn't matter. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms would bust them for any of the above. If they'd caught them, but that particular day had favored the law-breakers over the lawmen.

And so, the murmurs concur, if Luke Duke is on his way up the river, it's only because he done plopped that canoe in the water all on his own, jumped in and started paddling, thumbing his nose at the law all the way.

* * *

Cold fingers poking at her gut, ever since Bo showed up unexpectedly as the start of lunch rush.

_Don't_ he'd warned, _react outwardly. It'll let Boss know he's getting a rise out of us, and I don't figure old Luke wants that._

Because old Luke, it turns out, is in jail. Not like the Rosco-accused-him-of-scuffing-a-squad-car kind of jail, more the ten-years-behind-bars-with-only-one-visiting-day-a-month sort of jail. Prison, and the best they can hope for is him winding up in Atlanta, at least. Where they can afford to travel every now and again to talk through intercoms and touch opposite sides of a pane of glass instead of each other, where Uncle Jesse will have to do the driving, because neither she nor Bo will be able to see the road for the tears in their eyes, even if her baby cousin would deny that the moisture there was anything more than sweat.

No. That's the misery in the pit of her belly nagging at her. None of this is anything like a forgone conclusion. There's still a trial to be held, and that's only if the rest of the Dukes can't find some evidence to clear the oldest of the brood first. A fight in front of them, and if it's likely to leave some welts and bruises in its wake, it's not lost yet.

Not yet, but then it's early. Hardly much past noon when Jesse comes bustling in, with Bo in tow. Grabbing her by the arm, and so much for the notion of keeping their voices low; her protective, grumpy, bear of an uncle is out of hibernation and on the prowl now. Slamming right through the door on the far side of the roadhouse, no time for polite little tappings that politely beg for entrance. Solid thud of door slamming shut again; wouldn't seem possible to make cinderblock vibrate, but Jesse accomplishes it.

"J.D.!" would rattle the timbers if there were any. As it is, Daisy reckons that the moose head rattles on the wall, shaking loose those dust motes that always manage to hang in its antlers, even after she's run her fancy feather duster over them. "I don't know what you're up to, but this time you've gone too far!" As if the man has ever been restrained in his efforts to harass and hinder the Dukes. Then again, there's been a betrayal – whatever beefs they've had between them, Dukes and Hoggs have always fought right here on home turf. They've never involved outsiders like the Sweetwater County Chief of Police.

"Why, Jesse Duke, I don't know what you're talking about," could be a line in a play. The same play, showing every night on the chancel of the Methodist Church, for lack of a proper stage. A morality play, where good triumphs over evil, except in this here county the roles got reversed at some point, and the villain wears white. "I ain't up to nothing more than eating my lunch."

"Yeah." It wants to menace, to be a lawman's growl in echo of the rumpus Jesse raised, but it fails. Because where the Duke patriarch is genuinely ready to do battle in the name of his kids, Rosco's more interested in cowering behind the bulk of the County Commissioner – "he ain't up to nothing more than eating his lunch," – as evidenced by the his echolalia.

Lunch and dinner for four Dukes, a Davenport and a Strate, and there'd still be leftovers for Maudine – that's the amount of food on Boss Hogg's plate. Piled high and wide; in danger of toppling over and causing injury. Poor Rosco's huddled close, drooling his little heart out and getting shoved back any time his fingers get too close to the pork chops. Or maybe it's steak. Could be lamb or even duck, and Daisy wouldn't know because Lulu's taken to bringing her husband's meals to him instead of letting him order from the Boar's Nest kitchen. Something about a diet; seems to be going well, so long as the goal is to ensure gained weight.

"J.D.," is Jesse's red-faced response to proclaimed innocence. If Boss had any sense, he'd be getting real honest, and darn quick. There's a whipping being tacitly offered, and the soft skin of Hogg's backside is not in the least prepared for the vehemence of a strap wielded by one Jesse Duke. "Don't you go—"

"Now, now, Jesse," is too reasonable, too relaxed and laid back. Too much to take, and Bo's stepping into the fray now. Daisy's fully aware of this, because she's also advancing on the two men huddled behind that oversized desk.

"Boss!" she snaps, before Bo can get there. This is her fight more than it's his, even. She's the one who promised Miss Minnie her cousins' help, the one who nagged at the two of them until Luke gave in with that gentle _all right, all right_ that he saves for times when he reckons she's being a temperamental female. When he doesn't want to fight and he doesn't want to give in, but he's going to, because she's his cousin and he loves her. Bo might think he's got a bone to pick with the commissioner, but not until Daisy's taken a few licks out of that Hogg hide herself.

"It ain't my fault that Luke done gone against your word, Jesse," Boss simpers before using his fork to open a mortal wound in the skin of a baked potato.

Familiar feel to the arm that comes across her chest, her uncle restraining her every bit as powerfully as he used to when she was tiny, perched there in the passenger seat of his pickup, and he was forced to brake suddenly in deference to a crazy driver or a deer strolling across the road. A glance and she can see that somehow Jesse's managing to hold both her and Bo back at once, and it really is her childhood revisited. The man's arms shouldn't be long enough to manage that anymore, now that they've grown up.

Could be sheer determination that gives their uncle the strength to keep them back, and elicit the automatic _yes, sir_ that the two of them embody, even if they don't say it out loud. Whatever the cause, she and Bo stand back to watch the fireworks: red face, white hair, blue eyes, and if Boss had any brains at all, he'd salute. "Luke didn't go against nothing, J.D. Hogg, and you know it. All he done was to help out a poor widow lady that wasn't in no condition to be driving—"

"Her own moonshine?" Boss supplies with smug little smirk. "So she had to hire Luke? I knew you Dukes was poor Jesse, but I never figured you'd stoop to—"

Funny thing about stooping, how Jesse's doing it now so that he can go nose to nose with a stubborn fool who just doesn't know when to quit. Except when he can feel the hot breath of the raging Duke patriarch scorching against his skin, blowing what little hair he still has back from his face.

"My Luke ain't stooped to nothing half as low as you crawl every day. If there really was moonshine in that truck, it's only because you put it there."

Hanging silence, dangerous moment of quiet as Boss digests the accusation that has been spat at him. The urge to defend himself is right there in how his greasy, gravy-covered fingers have dropped the pork or beef or lamb they were just holding, but the fear of that feral thing in Jesse, the animal instinct to flatten anyone that may have harmed one of the youngsters in his care, pops out of him like those giant brown eyes.

"Jesse Duke," doesn't simper or sneer, is neither sneakiness nor obfuscation. It's just a man, finally digging within himself to find some shred of honesty. "I ain't had nothing to do with what happened to Luke." Cowering, suddenly, under the way Jesse leans and looms over him, but the story doesn't change. "I swear! Ridegrunner's honor."

Skeptical head tilt from Jesse, close scrutiny of the pudgy face in front of him, and finally their uncle backs off far enough to let the man breathe.

Funny how much braver those few inches of space Jesse gives make the county's sheriff. "Yeah, Jesse. He ain't had nothing to do with it," which sounds plenty tough and menacing until it gets followed by an "ijit!" when Jesse rolls his eyes in Rosco's direction.

Slow, thoughtful, deliberate are Jesse's next words. "If it wasn't you J.D., who done it? Not Minnie Jordan." But it's contemplative, revealing just the tiniest fragment of a doubt in Jesse's conviction. Subtle hint that all may not be what it seems, but Boss and Rosco are too blunt to catch onto it.

And Bo's just too dang mad to care about subtleties. Now that Jesse's restraining arm is gone, he marches up close and personal to Boss. "It don't matter who done this to Luke. The point is he's innocent." If he's waiting for the law of Hazzard to agree with him, her impetuous cousin is wasting his time. Boss's attention has been diverted away from the food in front of him for close to a whole minute, and that's got to be a record. One he's not about to repeat for the likes of Bo Duke, who might tower over his uncle, but doesn't evoke the same sort of grudgingly respectful response as the old man. There's already a barbecued something-or-other in Boss's right hand and the handle of a root-beer-float-filled mug in his left, while both eyes are taking in the feast in front of him, plotting his next move, no doubt. Or just waiting for his fool brother-in-law to dare to make a grab for any of it. "Dang it, Boss!" Bo never has been particularly fond of being ignored. Many childhood temper tantrums stemmed from her or Luke not paying him enough mind. "If you ain't gonna do nothing else to help Luke, at least sign a new pass so's I can go into Sweetwater and fix this myself." It's almost cute how Bo reckons that he has half a chance of fixing this all by himself, and all he needs a loophole out of his probation that lasts past noon.

"You already had one pass today," Boss reminds him, punctuated by a gleeful little giggle from Rosco. It's a rookie mistake on the Sheriff's part, drawing attention to himself just as he's reaching after an errant French dry. Fingers slapped, he rocks back on his heels to sulk for awhile. "It ain't my fault it done run out."

"Boss," is Bo's less-than-quiet complaint. Chest puffed, finger pointing, his body language screams louder than his mouth, and Aunt Lavinia would send him into the corner for that kind of behavior. If it was anyone but Boss, most likely. Her aunt never lost any love for that man.

Whose hands are raised in protest against the way he's being treated. Pure innocence oozing from his pores like sweat, and he has no idea why the Duke family is picking on him. "Now it ain't my fault. When you asked me for that pass, you said you only needed it until noon. If'n you'd told me you needed it for the whole day, it would have been different."

Bo must hear the lecturing voice of their Aunt Lavinia ringing in his ears, too, considering the way he grits his teeth against the words he'd like to say. Likely something about how if he'd known Boss was going to find some roundabout way to get Luke incarcerated, he would have asked for a longer stay in Sweetwater. At least those are the words Daisy would say if it were her that was on probation, and if she thought they'd do a lick of good. Bo, of course, goes a more direct route.

"That don't mean you can't give me a new pass." Extra sibilance there at the end, but that's only because Bo's jaw seems to be clenched shut.

Tilted head, wrinkled forehead, and for a split second the Commissioner resembles a Saint Bernard. Thinking hard about Bo's words, or in deep consideration of the way the Duke family is closing ranks around his desk again, or maybe he's just playing eeny-meeny-miney-moe as he decides which delicacy to pop into his mouth next.

"I reckon I could," Boss answers, so maybe it is Bo's words he's been thinking about after all. "But it ain't gonna do you now good nohow." Proud little jut to that pudgy chin, and even Rosco gets over the recent snub long enough to concur about how a pass will not help Bo one bit. "On account of Luke Duke ain't in Sweetwater County no more."

And she's had just about enough of this. Anyone can see that Jesse's face is scarlet with anger, and Bo's heart is all but broken over Luke's arrest. And Boss has just been toying with each and every one of them, as if they were nothing more than peas on his plate.

"What do you mean he ain't in Sweetwater?" she snaps, because no one messes with Daisy Duke's family without feeling the sharp edge of her tongue. (Or the cold drip of beer running over their heads and down their spines. But this is Boss, who would not only order Rosco to arrest her, but also charge her for a full pitcher, even if she only used a mug.) "Bo there saw him get taken into custody. Are you calling him a liar?"

"Oh no." Reasonable, calm, infuriating tone. "No not at all. I'm only saying that Luke ain't in Sweetwater no more. On account of Rosco done heard over the scanner that he got extradited." Happy little head bobs from the man behind him. "To Claridge."

It's then, finally, that the cold fingers stop poking at her stomach, vacate it entirely. So it can drop, faster than the General can pull out of a one-eighty spin, all the way down to her feet.

* * *

"Young man, you mind me."

Bright skies, endless day. Purposeful battle with Jesse, rapidly going the way of pointless. He's not going to win, no matter how much sense he makes. Next words out of his uncle are going to be something along the lines of _you just get out to that barn, boy. I'll be along directly. (As soon as I stop by my bedroom to pick up the strap.)_

Only this morning, just ticks on a clock, and he let Luke go without a thought. Took some nudging and negotiating, just a touch of begging, but he never doubted his victory. Images of Penny dancing in front of his eyes, and promises that he'd be along as soon as her body filled their car – Luke could understand that. And when it came right down to it, he wasn't the first Duke cousin to ditch a boring errand in favor of a pretty girl. A silly smirk, a shaking head, then Luke climbed into the work truck and was gone. No need to touch, to hug, to say anything about love; shoot, the idea never even passed through Bo's brain, what with how it was filled with Penny. _Goodbye_, he forgot to even say that much.

"You ain't going into Claridge County," his uncle's reminding him, as if there's any way he could be less than clear about where Jesse stands on this. "Not yet."

Not until they can catch a drift of what J. W. Hickman, the County Commissioner of Claridge, is up to. Sure, it's never been any real secret that this whole thing is a set up, but now the players have changed. Hogg is a harmless, if frustrating, presence in Hazzard County. Hickman would bribe his own mother, if she hadn't already passed over to the other side, some ten years back. Then again, there are those who whisper about whether he might have done her in when she refused to ante up cold, hard cash in exchange for her boy's 'protection.' Because the man's connected, and the circle he runs in doesn't tolerate those who fail to get the job done. Even if it does mean shaking down close relatives.

But those are just rumors, and Bo doesn't have time for those. Facts are facts, and the first one is that Luke is in jail, and the second is that his family can't get to him. Not until they have waited for some unspecified amount of time for Hickman to tip his hand.

"Yes, sir," he grinds out from between gritted teeth. Because Jesse needs to hear it, because Bo wants the lecturing to stop. Because they're standing there on the back porch, breathing in the air sweetened by the cool mountain runoff, watching the sun dance over galaxies of green. It's a perfect spring day, one that begs him to follow the call of the red tailed hawk out into the fields, to grab his compound bow and hunt the afternoon away, or just sprawl out on a soft patch of grass and let the sun melt the ice in his heart. But he can't.

_Tell me the truth, boy_ goes unsaid, but the blue of Jesse's eyes is fixed on him, watching for any sign that he's planning to disobey the direct order he's been given. Somewhere in the neighborhood of five times now, and Jesse's torn between frustration and compassion. "I know," is how he tries to soften the blow of what he's asking of Bo. "How hard this is for you."

But he doesn't. He didn't stand on the pavement, solid ground beneath his feet, never stepping off the edge to stand in the loose dust with Luke. He didn't watch that forced calm come over his oldest nephew, didn't see how Luke kept Bo from walking into the line of fire. How he sacrificed himself while his baby cousin didn't lift a finger to help him, not even his left pinkie.

Didn't get back into the car with a girl he'd been so enamored of that he left his kin to face devils alone, didn't drive back to Hazzard with her sulking all the way (or maybe that wasn't fair, maybe she just kept to herself because she didn't know what to say), didn't slink back home without ever once offering his own hands for the cuffing.

"But you couldn't help Luke none," is the man who bears no guilt in this whole mess, still talking, still consoling. "If you was in jail, too."

Deception, misrepresentation, but it's not deliberate. Or it's simply what the man wants to believe, but Bo knows better. About how jail is someplace no Duke should ever tolerate alone.

He was just a kid then; though it was only a few years ago, it was pre-probation and that night when the Duke boys made their last whiskey run is a clear boundary between innocence and adulthood for him. Relatively fresh out of high school at the time, and his uncle only knows half of this story. How Luke was still skittish and solitary, and Bo was impatient and irritated. Legal to drink, finally, and his war veteran cousin had no interest in crowds or loud places, so Bo went out alone, drank with a vengeance. Danced with anything in a skirt, fought anything with fists. Got himself the enforced hospitality of a county bed for the night, and Jesse reckoned to let him sleep it off there. That's the tale the whole family can tell. Only him and Luke know how after the lights got turned out, and Rosco left him to his own misery, there came a quiet call from the open air between the bars of the window. On his belly in the dirt, Luke spent the night talking through the bars to him. Scolding a little, comforting a lot. Joking quietly, saying more than he had since he was a barefoot country boy himself. Pre-war Luke, back to pay a visit to the shut-ins. Oh, sure, Bo had imbibed plenty, but he was a Duke, could hold his liquor. He remembers every part of that night, up until the point he fell to sleeping, Luke's words guiding his dreams. And when farm-raised habit woke him at first light, his cousin was still there, dirt staining the elbows of his shirt, and pink indentations of grass blades imprinted on his cheek.

Because a Duke should never be left alone in a jail cell. Bo hasn't got the first idea what excuses Luke made for his absence from the farm that night, or how he softened Jesse against the whipping he stood ready to dole out the next morning. He doesn't remember whether there was bail money involved, or whether Rosco just plain released him into the custody of his big cousin. All he knows is that Luke laid right down there on the lawn of the Hazzard County Courthouse and stayed with him, all night.

"I reckon it would be better for him if I was in there with him," Bo informs his uncle with a sigh. "But I'll stay here." For today. No promises about tomorrow.


	3. Standing to Reason

**Chapter Three -- Standing to Reason**

More moves than a rabbit with a bobcat on its tail, slipperier than a water snake, quicker than a hot knife through fresh churned butter, that's the Duke boys. Racing around town in that orange stock car, half wild. It's not that they can't be caught; heck, even Rosco manages it from time to time. It's just that they can't be held, and before the sun sets, mutterings mount into bets about how long it'll be before Luke Duke is on the loose again.

Only the mean-spirited, like angry Ernie Ledbetter, or the daddies whose little girls have arrived home hours late from a date with the Duke boy wager against him getting free at all. And two-thirds of those hope to lose.

* * *

There are things that stand to reason. Like how his boys got collared for transacting the family business in the first place. Rumor said they couldn't be caught; stood to reason that any revenuer worth their salt would take that kind of gossip personally and redouble their efforts. Call in all their markers and make convenient and temporary alliances to tip the scales in their favor.

Stands to perfect reason that the resulting probation would chafe at his boys, wear on them and stick in their craw. Dukes were born to run as free as the rivers that ramble across the land or the osprey the coasts through the skies. And it stands to that same sort of reason that the law and government of the county would take special glee in caged Dukes – it's only been a lifetime of the same battles fought over the same ground, over who's got power and who has heart. Not to mention how his boys have to go begging for permission to enter half the dirt track races on the circuit, because leaving the county means getting permission from Boss Hogg.

Reason also dictates that if Luke can be extradited to Claridge County, he can be moved back here to Hazzard. Seems like, if a crime's been committed at all, it started within the boundaries of this county in which Dukes were born and raised. And if that crime traveled, if it journeyed over to Claridge, well it couldn't have spent any more than about the four minutes that it takes to pass through the southern tip of that county en route to Sweetwater. Seems like Luke didn't make it too far over that last border before he got pulled over, and if Bo's description of events is even moderately accurate, the duration of time that his oldest boy was in violation of Sweetwater law was very brief. If there's a county that's the biggest victim of the alleged crime, it's Hazzard. Stands to reason Boss should love that. Man's been looking to be the victim of something since he was a chubby little boy getting shoved around on the red clay of the Hazzard schoolyard. In fact, if there's any justice in the world, Jesse won't have to work too hard at convincing the oversized marshmallow that it's perfectly reasonable for him to want Luke caged on his own home turf.

"Sorry, Jesse," gets muttered around the edges of a cigar. Oh, but he's not. He's smug, just look at how his eyes never raise from the accounting ledgers in front of him. Sure, those books are as phony as three dollar bills; they're nothing more than a game J.D. plays. Like a little girl with a doll she calls her baby, Hogg sits there counting imaginary money and picturing himself a genuine millionaire. When all he is, really, is the richest man in a dirt-poor county. Nothing more than fool daydreams and false dollar signs in front of his face, and the man can't tear himself away from them long enough to look an old friend, long time adversary, a constituent and competitor, in the eye. "It ain't got nothing to do with me."

"What do you mean it ain't got nothing to do with you? J.D.," and he's dang sick of being halfway ignored. Without bothering to consult his brain, his right hand reaches out and snatches a ledger off J.D.'s desk. Strange thing, all the laws of genetics go against it, but he'd swear he suddenly takes after his own youngest nephew. Impulsive and incensed. "You listen to me now."

"Jesse Duke!" gets snapped at him, and with a frightening amount of effort, Boss struggles to his feet. Could be that the desk is too close or that his belly's too big, or maybe he's just not as young as he used to be; but that last is nothing the Duke patriarch wants to think about. After all, he's got six months on the man in front of him. "You give me that back, right now!" Then again, he's the same temper-tantrum throwing little boy he ever was.

Popping brown eyes glaring, chest forward and chin up, as if the man has half an intent to scrap right here in his county office, with Rosco on the other side of the door, undoubtedly holding a glass to his ear.

But he's finally got the dang-fool's attention.

"I'll give it back," he bargains, even as he holds the book behind him like a bratty little boy who has stolen his sister's diary. Calm, now that he's got what he needs to make the commissioner focus, he can take a leaf out of Luke's book. Cool, collected, he's got all the time in the world. "As soon as you call over the Claridge and get my boy transferred here."

"I can't do that Jesse," J.D. explains, walking forward, palms outstretched. Funny how it looks every bit like he's asking for a donation out of Jesse's wallet; then again a lifetime of grifting can do that to a man. "On account of ain't no charges been made against Luke in this county. You can't extradite a man unless you got a complaint lodged against him."

He can't believe he's about to say this. "File a complaint then." Not just say, shout. Loud enough for Rosco to hear even without the aid of a glass. Because it's a simple solution, and it stands to reason Boss should have every interest in the world in doing it.

"Now Jesse, ain't no one reported seeing Luke commit a crime here. And I ain't witnessed him doing nothing. How can I charge him? Unless," scheming little word. Thoughtful, clever, proud man jabbing his cigar in Jesse's direction. "_You_ want to file a complaint against him." Challenging little smirk that he'd like to wipe off that chubby face.

But he's an honorable man. "I ain't got no intentions of filing nothing at all against Luke." It's amazing that it comes out as civil as it does, considering the way heat flushes up into his face. "First of all because he ain't committed no crime."

"You sure about that, Jesse?" his nemesis simpers, and old J.D. really is pulling out all the stops this time. Maybe he figures to get himself swung at, maybe he reckons that he'll hold Jesse in the Hazzard jail while Luke's stuck over there in Claridge, and whatever it is that's trying to transpire can do so without either of them interfering. And if that's true, J.D. is an even bigger fool than Jesse's given him credit for being, if he really thinks Bo and Daisy won't manage to gum up the works just fine all on their own.

"I'm real sure about that J.D." But all this posturing isn't getting them anywhere. "What I ain't sure about is what you're doing linking up with J.W. Hickman. I know you ain't never lost no love for him." He can spend the day seething or he can find out what's really going on here.

"What?" Cigar gets popped into his mouth, same way a toddler's thumb would. Jesse reckons he knows this man well enough to tell when he's been truly affronted. "Why, I ain't linked up with that man over nothing, nohow." Insulted, hurt, and that, Jesse Duke, is the whole truth. "I wouldn't help him do anything, even if'n it _was_ to catch one of you Dukes." There are no fingers crossed behind the fool's back. He means it.

"Well," Jesse suggests, just as easy and casual as if he were discussing the price of canned goods at Rhuebottoms, "I suppose if you wanted to rile him, the best way you could do it would be to get Luke extradited back here."

"Dat!" Wide-eyed honesty is done for the day; it's amazing, come to think about it, that the Hazzard County Commissioner managed to keep it up as long as he has. "I ain't got no interest in getting on J.W. Hickman's bad side." Jesse's about to be dismissed in a minute, and he reckons he'd better make these last seconds as useful as possible.

"Well, all right. If you want the town talking about how you was too much of a scaredy-cat to stand up to the Boss of Claridge County, I suppose it ain't no skin off my back."

"Jesse!" J.D. is close, suddenly. Not threatening, closer to conspiratorial. Quiet, not-quite-whispering, because such heavy lips were not made for speaking softly. "J.W. Hickman, he ain't no one to mess with." Which is exactly why they've got to get Luke out of his county. "He ain't a nice man." And that's an understatement. "Now that truck Luke stole," and a man wasn't meant to control himself when such words get said. Jesse lets go fo the ledger, leaving it to fall whrever it wants to, and grabs the lapel on that custom-fitted white coat, twisting. Reels Boss in those last few inches until he's right there under the Duke patriarch's most withering glare. It's just another one of those things that stands to reason, when J.D. starts to backtrack. "I mean allegedly stole," and Jesse lets him go. Watches as he smoothes his poor, offended jacket, as he considers whether to clam up now, but he thinks better of it when he catches Jesse's eye again. "That truck done belonged to one of Hickman's deputies. If you could call him that. They're more like bodyguards over there, and they'd probably be more useful than that sad excuse of a sheriff I got—" that part gets aimed at the door and the glass that's most likely on the other side. "Jacob Jordan. I ain't got nothing to charge Luke with that's going to make Hickman let him go. Now I'm sorry," and this time he might halfway mean it, "but I can't help you."

All the air in Jesse's body gets sighed out of him. "All right J.D." This next part is hard to say; he's not sure he's ever used these words on Hogg before. "Thank you." But his Mama raised him right.

Now that that's said, he's got no reason to stay here. He grabs the cap from out of the back pocket of his overalls, shakes it out, starts to put it on his head when J.D. grabs his arm. One more unquiet secret the man needs to tell.

"I hear tell that Hickman was disappointed that both of your boys wasn't in that truck, Jesse." It's a confession of sorts. Not that J.D. had anything to do with what happened to Luke – if he did, his lips would be sealed into a gleeful little grin – but that somewhere in the circles where County Commissioners gossip, he has learned that the Duke boys were set up. Just, somehow by mistake, the trap set for two only managed to catch one.

"Thank you," Jesse says again, no thought or hesitation about it this time. He's got places to be. Like home, where it stands to reason that he's going to have to hogtie Bo in order to keep him from running over the Claridge County and getting himself jailed alongside his cousin.

* * *

Ten years, a decade. It's not much, not really. Hell, it's been ten years plus another five since Lavinia left them, and he can still remember her gnarled hands smoothing down his unruly hair like it was yesterday. Then again, he can't picture her face, not animated, anyway. He can draw to mind those photos in the family album that include her, and then there's that old school picture, faded and grainy, from long before he was born. He can remember the look of that, but the Lavinia he knew was never that young, never wore her hair hanging down like that but wrapped her braids around her head. He knows the facts of what she looked like, could describe her to a stranger, but he can't see her smile, the patience in her eyes as she explained that he didn't know his own strength, that he could hurt those smaller than him without meaning to, and that was why he had to control his temper. Ten years (plus another five) is long enough to forget the face of the woman he loved like a mother.

Ten years, but it'll only happen if he gets convicted in a trial. Which can only take place if he gets justice, and now that he's in Claridge County, he reckons justice is a luxury to which he's not entitled. He's got no idea why he's been set up to disappear into the Claridge legal system, but logic tells him that's what's going on here. Because if Boss Hogg is crooked, Claridge's Boss Hickman is downright double jointed, bending this way and that as it suits his purpose on any given day. And whereas the Hazzard County Commissioner has little interest in doing the right thing, he at least understands the concepts of right and wrong. Old J.W. Hickman, whose office is somewhere around the twists and turns of this building – Luke knows this because he hears the man's crude laugh ricocheting off the walls from time to time – really figures that both good and bad bow their heads in deference to money.

Which means it's not so much ten years as the rest of his life that is in jeopardy.

Which ought to be of no particular consequence to him. Sure, there are bars in front of him and cinderblock walls to either side, but that's nothing to fret about. The chill of a jail cell is as familiar to him as the sweltering heat of the bedroom that he and Bo share. If there's one skill he's acquired in his adult years, it's being a prisoner. For an hour, or maybe even a dozen hours at a time. Until he grows bored or restless, or figures out that there's something better he could be doing with his time. Then he makes short work of getting out from behind the bars that are meant to contain him.

Or, he and Bo do those things. There's no jail cell been built that can hold two Duke boys for more than the time they feel like resting their bodies or their brains. But he's only one Duke boy, in an unfamiliar cell, where an unknown (but clear-speaking, no stuttering here) sheriff's deputy has locked him, then walked right back out with the keys. The door is solidly sealed, unlike that cell in the upstairs of the Hazzard County Courthouse that doesn't properly lock; the one that he and Bo have made a point of never letting Enos and Rosco know exactly how it is that they manage to get out of in record time. And though Hickman's voice, and occasionally that of the oversized bodyguard doubling as law enforcement, Rollo, makes it's way through the halls and past the bars of the cell, no one, apparently, can hear him. Not when he asks for his one phone call, not when he hollers for lunch, not even when he all but begs to be escorted to the bathroom.

Ten years, and he reckons it could get worse if he gets himself a dangerous and violent cellmate. Ten years and in that time Daisy's likely to get around to settling down with Enos and bearing beautiful but uncoordinated children, and Bo will figure out having a few kids of his own, even if it does mean hitching himself to someone 'til death do they part. And Jesse – Jesse might not last another ten years.

It'll pass in the snap of a finger; after all, it's only a lifetime that he's likely to be locked up for.


	4. Presenting his Neck for the Noose

**_Author's note: _**_Yeah, yeah, I'm late. Sorry about that. It's been a heckuva week (and it's barely Tuesday)._

* * *

**Chapter Four -- A Hellbent Halfwit Presenting his Neck for the Noose**

Greedy, and Hazzard's citizens know greed. The look, smell and feel of greed, which might all boil down to the gritty filth of cigar smoke or the slimy slip of cooking oil. But even that is a relatively tidy greed, dressed in white, hungry as a chick with its beak spread wide and hollering for more despite the fact that its belly ought to be full. The kind of greed that can be understood, mastered, lived with.

At least, the local folk can quietly assure one another, the greed that keeps them in its sights, trying to snatch away what little they have, has no genuine intentions of doing them harm. Hogg may not be half as smart as he gives himself credit for, but he has learned the most basic lesson of survival in Appalachia – that killing the entire herd today means no food for tomorrow.

Claridge County's brand of greed is black and choking. It's more than hungry, it's a bottomless abyss that can never be filled. And Hazzard folk have lived next door to that vacuum long enough to quietly, in remote corners and near-empty fields, do the math behind the current situation. If Boss J.W. Hickman is after wealth, Luke Duke is a fool's target. There's something else going on here.

* * *

Busy, busy, far too much going on to be dealing with Dukes today. Too much of his precious time got snatched away by them yesterday, gobbled up from breakfast to dinner. Travel permits signed first thing in the morning with the thought that at least he'd have those two ruffians out of his hair until noon, but the news of Luke's arrest had interrupted him just as he'd been about to start his mid-morning snack. Jesse burst in on him at lunch, then again when he'd settled to a mid-afternoon bite, and by evening that glutton J.W. Hickman had called, wanting to bargain for Luke Duke's freedom. As if Jefferson Davis Hogg wouldn't just give him permission to hang the boy if he wanted to. (Well, maybe not hang, maybe nothing like hang. Maybe he likes Luke Duke alive, but he sure as shooting doesn't need him running free in Hazzard.)

Loud, crude family, those Dukes are, never knowing their place, tracking their farm dirt right into his county building. Demanding entry if ever he tries to bar the door, considering themselves citizens of this fine county when all they really manage to be is thorns in his side. Never leaving well enough alone, their noses are always firmly stuck in his business, and it's no wonder he wants vacation from them every now and then. Nothing permanent, but ten years would be mighty nice. If only Hickman hadn't fumbled when it came to picking up Bo, too. (He reckons that must have been an unfortunate miscalculation on the neighboring commissioner's part; must've just about kicked himself for going after two Dukes and only winding up with one. Good to know that kind of mishap isn't limited to his own bumbling law enforcers.) Then again, it was a perfectly clean bust, made in Sweetwater, so just maybe there's some merit to it. Maybe he's really rid of Luke Duke for awhile.

Even if he's stuck with Bo Duke, out there squabbling with Rosco in the squad room like they're nothing more than a pair of kids fighting over a new toy fire engine, shiny and red. Seems like the Duke boy is getting a touch belligerent, insisting on rights that he doesn't have. Like access to his probation officer, and both of those boys have just gotten a little bit spoiled when it comes to that. Probation isn't meant to be manipulated at will; they aren't supposed to get permission to leave the county every time some piddling little problem presents itself. (All right, so a ten year prison sentence is just a tad bigger than piddling. And maybe he wouldn't mind a trip over to Claridge himself, just to let his own eyes see Luke tightly secured behind bars. Except that if Hickman's call yesterday is any indication, he'd do best not to get too close to that particular county line.) Heck, if Bo and Luke had had higher ambitions, if their unfortunate little moonshine run had gone into Atlanta, if they'd been caught and confined within the Fulton County borders, why they'd have to make an appointment two months in advance before they could get to their probation officer there.

"Dat, dat, Rosco," he finally intervenes, before it turns into a shoving match and someone gets hurt. Sometime when he wasn't looking the youngest Duke cousin outgrew the whole dang county, towering over everyone's heads. And though his body got longer, his patience never did. Red-faced temper, and Bo is no one to tangle with when he gets that way. About the only ones who can keep him in check are his uncle (who really ought to be looking after his boy right now) and his cousin, Luke (who is understandably occupied at the moment). And, of course, the County Commissioner, because if this Duke boy has any smarts, he'll remember who holds the mortgage to the farm he lives on. "Let him be."

"Ijit!" Funny how his brother-in-law magically grows himself a spine, stands up taller when the hard glare of Bo Duke's eyes shifts away from his face to take in Boss's. "All right, Bo Duke," he growls with all due authority befitting a sheriff. "You can see him. But keep it short!" which actually sounds reasonably threatening, until the fool finishes it off with a series of _kyu-kyus_, a ridiculous giggle of a sound that no grown man should ever make.

Grinning-ninny Enos backs him up with a twitching, "See? I knew it would work out." Fiddling fingers gripping his hat, all teeth and eyes, until he remembers himself, looks around to find the man responsible for his paycheck watching him suck up to a Duke. Finds his wits then, steps back and it doesn't matter anymore, because Bo has strutted right into his line of vision.

"It's about time, Boss," tries to menace. Deep voice, still seems so out of place on this boy who used to squeak and peep, no lower than a songbird. Still cracks from time to time, like when he's boiling over with anger, and the commissioner reckons that could happen any minute now.

"Well, all right," Boss says to the fools in blue that are still peering around the mountain of Bo. "Get back to work." Or whatever they do out here in this shambles of a squad room. It's not like there's any excuse for the mess of papers and dust out here. Just because Boss doesn't let Mathilda – who costs too much to share, really – clean the squad room like she does his office, doesn't mean they couldn't take care of it themselves. And the only reason for that mound of papers on Enos' desk is that the boy never bothered to learn how to type. "Go find some parking violations," because there's money out there to be made, if his law enforcement officers weren't so danged lazy. Or ethical, but that's just Enos, and _he_ could be out looking for genuine law breakers.

"You heard the man," Rosco screams, as if it takes even half the volume he puts into it to make Enos cower. "Go find some parking violations!" Funny how there's no stuttering, no idiot nonsense sounds, not when the sheriff is just echoing words already spoken.

Satisfied, Boss can finally put his cigar back between his lips. All this time it's been burning down without a single puff of smoke making its way into his lungs – it's a waste, is what it is. Yet another reason he shouldn't be bothering to tolerate the Duke boy's presence here.

"Boss," puts one more nail in the coffin of his civility. Door gets closed – not particularly gently – behind them as Bo follows him into his office. Boy has the nerve to step right up and loom over him. "You've got to give me a pass to go into Claridge County."

"Oh," he says, calm and slow, and if it makes Bo's chest puff all the wider, makes his face go pink with frustration, well that's just one of those little benefits to being the Commissioner here in Hazzard. "I got to?" After all, he's forced to tolerate complaints and sass and fools like the one in front of him that's come barging into his office, so he has to take his pleasure where he finds it.

"Boss." Bo's eyes roll; he's trying to stay calm. All the effort in the world to be like his big cousin Luke, but aside from those wild mops of hair on their heads and the crude way in which they were raised, the two boys couldn't be more different. "Please." And there's the evidence, right there. Luke Duke is much too prideful to ever ask pleasantly, too surly to be nice. Too much temper twisted up tight in those farm-boy muscles, and unlike Bo, he never lets it go, not since he got old enough to know better. A few years in the Marines and that older boy came back hard to Bo's soft, quiet to Bo's loud. Grown up to Bo's child-in-a-man's-body.

_Does your uncle know you're here?_ It would be a good question, the kind a concerned neighbor would ask. Because giving Bo liberty to enter Clardige County might be akin to signing the boy's death warrant. But Boss is not a concerned neighbor, and it's not his job to look after the man in front of him. Who really isn't a child, his height and strength, the way he stood up and accepted the charges against him when that smarmy revenuer caught him running moonshine, the way he's ready to take his life in his hands to protect his worthless cousin, all go a long way toward proving that fact.

"Come back in a half hour," he instructs, jabbing his cigar toward the door, just in case the overeager fool has forgotten where it is.

"Boss," comes the anticipated complaint. Blue eyes of a frightened boy staring into his, trying to threaten, but someone with a nature as gentle as Bo Duke's can never quite manage that.

"Dat!" silences him. "You want the paperwork, you come back in a half hour." Oh, it won't take the County Commissioner half that time to make it out, not even if he stops for a snack. But it'll give Bo Duke a chance to cool off, to rethink the notion of storming right into the hands of J.W. Hickman. Time to head over to the Davenport boy's garage, and get the best advice a filthy mess of a mechanic can offer. And if, after those thirty minutes have passed, the boy comes barging back in here, demanding permission to cross county lines, well Boss will have done what he can for him. There's no way to keep a hell-bent halfwit from presenting his neck for the noose.

* * *

Wise, but wisdom's got nothing to do with it. Their uncle is smart, strong, heck, he's right, but that doesn't matter one bit against the stalwart persistence of Bo when he's indulging himself in a fit.

"Hickman ain't got the gall to lock me up," ran the gist of Jesse's argument. He could see the merit behind one of the Dukes going off to Claridge to see Luke. All of them sitting around the scarred table in the too-small kitchen of a gap-boarded farmhouse understood that. Their oldest cousin would undoubtedly insist that he was fine, that he was downright happy in jail. Didn't need anyone or anything, least of all family, worrying after him. Which is half of why she talked her way into joining Bo on this fool's errand.

Because it became clear, quickly enough, that Jesse could go to Claridge all he wanted, and it still wouldn't keep Bo here in Hazzard. Which left their uncle to decide the wisdom of all the Duke men presenting themselves as targets for Hickman, or giving him a shot at only one. "You be careful," had been Jesse acquiescing and lecturing, all at once. Grousing and grumbling and giving in, because as badly as their uncle wanted to see Luke, Bo needed it more.

"I'm going with him," had been her attempt at reassurance. Bo said no and tried not to listen to her reasoning, but he was no match for Daisy's fast talking. About how if she was there, Hickman would think twice about starting anything. And how even if he did, even if he threw Bo in jail right there on the spot, she could bring the General home. And how her younger cousin really shouldn't be alone on this trip (though she left out the part about how, if he saw Luke, and if Hickman actually let him walk back out of the Claridge County jail and leave their big cousin behind, he'd need her eyes to get them home, because his would undoubtedly be welled up with tears of frustration for what he hadn't been able to fix).

Outvoted, Bo found himself without support when their uncle agreed with her logic. Oh, her baby cousin's face was tight with disagreement, eyebrows down, and skin red right to the tips of his ears. But he nodded, mumbled _yes, sir_, and grabbed her by the arm.

"Just you wait, Bo Duke," might have been pushing him too far. "A minute," because she didn't need more than that to retrieve the other half of the reason she reckoned she should come along on this little trip.

Somewhere back in the days when she still wore overalls about the same shade as Jesse's, red clay ground into the seat and wearing mighty thin in the knees, when her hair was always in pigtails and on bad days she'd chew at the ends, Enos Strate started to crowd into her space. Oh, she couldn't ever remember a time when the boy hadn't been around, sharing the Duke farmhouse and the comfort of Aunt Lavinia's arms on nights when his father had _business_, same kind of business as Jesse did. Playing pick up games of baseball in the town green or basketball in the alley behind the Davenports' garage. Elbows, knees, sometimes a chin covered with a band-aid, because the boy couldn't be trusted to stay on his own two feet. Always there and then one day, sometime after her adult teeth had finally straightened themselves out from the crooked way they threatened to grow in, when her smile had settled, but her skin had just begun to break out, when she was caught between tomboy and farm girl, a lot closer.

Took her another five years to halfway appreciate that closeness. How Enos could stand right next to her, but never get so near that she'd have to push him away, how his eyes might have roamed but his hands never did.

Girls her age are starting to get picked off the vine, one-by-one. Dressed up delicately in white, pink blush of cheeks providing contrast. Folding themselves into the suntanned arms of Hazzard boys, promising until death do they part, and then whispering about the ones left behind. Keen hearing, and Daisy knows exactly what gets said about her and Enos. How it's about time he claimed his prize, and she really ought to know true love when she sees it. Moonshine runner's eyes, and she can see how much the man wants her. She's flattered; she considers it. Pictures herself in lace and crinoline, feels the eyes of Hazzard watching, the arms of her man around her. Imagines the kisses on her cheek, wishing her well and—

It all stops when the next lips in line to touch her cheeks are Jesse's, while Luke waits his turn, one hand on Bo to keep him from wandering off with one of the bridesmaids. Even in her best daydreams, they show up in rumpled clothes, tuxedos that look an awful lot like unwashed jeans, misbuttoned shirts hanging off their thin frames.

"Congratulations, Daisy-girl," Jesse says, uncombed hair falling over blue eyes. "Your Aunt Lavinia would be so proud."

Except she wouldn't, her aunt would be tsking at how she walked away from the men who need her, selfishly leaving them behind just so she could have her own day of glowing at the center of town, pink cheeked in a white dress.

Enos, he might or might not be the one. She doesn't have time to worry about it, not when there are already three men in her life, needing her more than they know.

Like right now, when she's opening the refrigerator to grab a pie that's been chilling in there since yesterday. She might have meant it to be last night's desert, or maybe she made it to bribe Cooter into checking her calipers and rotors; then again, it could have been something she meant to drop off at Enos' boarding house.

Doesn't matter, there's no one that needs it more than Luke. Everyone in Hazzard knows (because everyone in Hazzard has seen one or another of their relatives on the wrong side of those vertical bars) that when you go to visit the shut-ins, it's only proper to bring them some food.

"Let's go," she snaps at her younger cousin, as if it was him that held them up for these extra few seconds.


	5. Into the Gaping Maw of Danger

**_Author's Note: _**_I would like to point out (especially to Weldolet, who is likely giggling with glee at my lateness) that it is not my fault. The site and I have been locking horns for a good five or six days now. Thus far no winners have been declared in this here war, but here's another chapter anyway._

* * *

**Chapter Five -- Into the Gaping Maw of Danger**

The clink, the cooler; anyone who's been on the inside knows. There's jail and there's prison, and this time, it doesn't look like the Duke boy will get a reprieve. Off to the big house where his sassy mouth and overconfident attitude will land him on the wrong side of guards and earn him the ire of inmates.

Boys become men in prison, and men become victims of violence the likes of which women and children shouldn't hear about. Luke Duke is strong, steady, stalwart – and so much more naïve than he thinks. _He's been to war but he's never been to hell_, goes the whispered line of reasoning that makes its way around the fringes of the town, passing from one steaming still to the next.

Dirty corners of Hazzard, where words aren't minced, and if they're spoken discreetly, that's only to keep the revenuers from finding what hides in these hills. Only men out here, and not the gentle kind, either. Ones that know whereof they speak, and who reckon there's still one way out of this mess for that whippersnapper of a Duke boy.

"If that pretty little gal showed up and wiggled around in them shorts for me, I'd let that boy go." Doesn't matter who says it, everyone knows it to be true. Flies like honey, and that Daisy-girl, she's one heck of a honey.

But, "He'd never let her do it," is also the truth. No need to specify who _he_ is; all the men in her life would put a stop to such a thing before it could even get started. Which leads right back to shaking heads and shrugging shoulders over the unfortunate future of one Luke Duke.

* * *

Stifling, like humidity trapped under a plastic poncho in the middle of a jungle. He knows this feeling, remembers the secrets to surviving it. Peaceful pact made with the heat that it can do what it wants and he'll just sit here, still, silently ignoring it. And it would work just fine, if it were only the warmth that blankets him, but there's also the wordlessness of the place, a quiet the likes of which no one who has spent his life bunking with Bo Duke would ever expect to experience.

Most of the time. Sounds burst out every now and again same as car crashes. Accidental impacts clattering up the hallway at him. A raised voice, dropped keys, slammed doors. Downright musical.

Twice yesterday (and one can only hope it'll be more frequently today) a nearly mum deputy, whose name might or might not be Rick (but Luke mentally calls him that anyway) brought him a meal and escorted him to the bathroom. Funny how all the muttering stutters, the babblings of blunderings of Rosco make him accessible, trustworthy. A quiet man like Rick – there's no telling what he'll do, so Luke makes no false moves. Just does what he came for in the time allotted him, then goes quietly back to his cell. It's not all that long ago that his body was trained to function in these kinds of conditions; he can call on its reliability now.

Intentional. Deliberate – the cocoon they keep him in can't be inadvertent. There is no upstairs and down, not like in Hazzard, and the squad room is one of the bright spots he can see at the end of the hallway when there's daylight. Shadows pass across it, making nothing more than a hiss at about the pitch of a radiator releasing steam as they go by. Isolation, and it would make sense if it were interspersed with interrogation – rough questions about who his accomplices are, names and last known associates, and where exactly is the ringleader? – but it hasn't been. Just him and four walls, and the occasional shush-shush sound of movement in the distance.

Which makes, "What do you mean, he ain't allowed to have visitors?" all the more surreal when it comes clattering down the hallway, ricocheting off walls and bars and the wooden door of the broom closet.

Mirage, nothing more. Thirsty men in the desert see water, Luke Duke hears the booming voice of his baby cousin. It's not the first time it's happened to him; years back there came days when he'd swear he heard that silly giggle in the rain splashing against jungle palms, then there'd be a call from across the base camp. He'd move toward it, sure it was Bo, only to find Hibben or Martins or DiLorenzo out there, talking about nothing important and sounding not in the least like Luke's kid cousin.

So he ignores it, this mean little trick of the mind, listens as the noise fizzles itself back down into a buzz, not quite the same tone he's grown used to. Higher, maybe, tinkling a bit, almost flirtatious, and his mind has got to be having its way with him now. It's coming on summer, too hot in these parts for a radiator, especially not one that sounds… feminine.

"We're his closest kin," seems an awful lot like Daisy's voice, tipping over from that carefully balanced poise and charm she uses when she's trying to catch flies with honey, spiraling into that short-fused firecracker that explodes when she doesn't get her way. "He's got a right to see us."

His brain's definitely having a grand old time at his expense. His heart's beating faster and the moisture's leaving his mouth; his body's falling for the delusion, even if he knows better. Though he cautions himself against it, he still cocks an ear in the direction of the squad room, listening to hummed mumblings in hopes of hearing just one more familiar cadence.

"Now you wait just a dang minute!" And there it is. He can just about picture it, his yellow headed, six-and-a-half-foot cousin, eyebrows down, chin up, chest out, finger pointing. Either Bo is here or Luke has gone as batty as Miss Minnie, driven himself right around the bend, sitting here listening to silence.

Which has gone from hissing to bubbling, mumbles and grumbles that bounce off of each other before stumbling down the hallway at him. Words here and there that mean something, just nothing he can make sense of. "Jake," goes by, in what might be Rick's voice. "Are you sure?"

Growling, barking, dissention amongst the ranks. "I only just got this promotion," is a complete stranger with a mildly familiar delivery. Almost a whine at first, then more of a howl, ending in a yelp.

"Bo," is Daisy sounding suddenly scared, deeply determined. "Come on now, it ain't worth it."

More voices, downright cacophonous, and Bo's cadence sails over the din. "I ain't leaving here until I see my cousin!"

Obstinate, annoyed, insistent, and dang it all, that _is_ Bo out there. Threatening his way behind bars, into this little pod of insanity, and Luke won't have it.

"Bo," he calls out, with less volume than any of the rest of the voices he's suddenly been inundated by, but it gets a response.

Tentative, worried, "Luke?"

Of course he got heard, it's a trick he learned long ago in a farmhouse crammed full of vocal Dukes. Scream, and fingers will waver over ears, just waiting to block out the noise. Whisper, and the whole room will strain to listen. Cousins and lawmen alike, he's got their full attention now, so he's careful.

"You go on home now, you hear?" It's not what he wants to say, not by country miles. On another day he might resent the necessity to keep his wits about him, to present a calm front when it's him that's in trouble. Today he's just glad there's someone to stay calm _for_. "You and Daisy, you go on. I'm just fine here." Which would count as a lie if he were in Hazzard, but Claridge County is just a giant pair of fingers, crossed and hidden behind old Hickman's back. A place so warped that laws and rules bend and curve like a moonshine runner's switchback trail.

"Luke," Bo says again, but there are other voices in the way again, disagreeing over whether even this much goes against the orders that the lawmen have been given. Deputies (or sometimes they seem to get called marshals) left in charge, not quite knowing their own bounds. Something worth remembering, but nothing to be using right now. Not when Bo and Daisy are right here in the line of fire with him.

"Come on, Bo," their female cousin encourages.

Shadows move, the light is lost. Shapes at the end of a tunnel, backlit and too bright, but he knows the curves of his cousins anywhere. Manages a smile and a wink. "Go on," he repeats. "Give Uncle Jesse my love."

Code talk, very simple. Go home and talk about what you saw here. Work together, come up with a plan. Get me the hell out of here.

"All right, Luke," Daisy answers. "You take care."

Good girl, taking over where he, of necessity, must leave off. Pulling on Bo's arm, dragging him away from the danger he'd dive into readily, if only his family would let him.

"Luke," Bo calls one more time; could be his and Daisy's efforts are all for nothing. "Love you."

And that right there isn't even code talk, it's strictly factual.

"I know," he answers, because he does know. That his kid cousin would gladly switch places with him, if only Luke would give the signal. Which is why he smiles again, nods his head and says, "Now get."

He figures that the second his kin are gone he'll be descended upon, questioned, threatened, menaced. Asked what in hell that was all about and reminded that as a guest in this here institution he needs to be sure that his visitors are a little more respectful of the duly constituted law.

Instead, the quiet drapes itself thickly over him again, and he wonders whether he hallucinated the whole damned thing.

* * *

When all is said and done, he has, after all, a toe. Big one, twinges a bit when it's about to rain, but that doesn't hold a candle to the way it screams like a squalling infant whenever one of his kids is in trouble. Lavinia used to laugh at him, muss his hair, then kiss the gruff grimace off his face over it, but he'll swear until his dying day that each of the three of them sets off their own unique pain. Steady, aching throb that rubs up against the leather of his shoes, that's been Luke for the past twenty-four hours. Daisy's more of a contracting pang, clinging tight around the joint and Bo – Bo is everywhere all at once, roaring sort of thing that could just about make a man fall over.

So he may have forced himself to let his two younger kids follow after the oldest right into the gaping maw of danger, but it's not like he can't keep tabs on them through the sensations in his foot. And so far, it's just Luke pushing against the grain of his boot, so nothing has gone wrong, at least nothing in Claridge.

"Why if it isn't Jesse Duke come a-calling on me." No, things in Claridge have got to be sunshine bright, at least compared to standing here in the shadows of Minnie Jordan's porch. "After all these years. By now I done figured it just wasn't possible."

Rolled eyes are just about the only reasonable response he can give to that. Minnie's games, they never ended. Her hair may have faded out of that stunning red into an equally striking white, and her young-girl figure may have plumped out here and there, but those gray-green eyes are just as mischievous as ever, and she might just as well be flouncing around in the cinch-waisted skirts of her youth.

"Come in, won't you, and take some tea with me." Seems to him it was just about those very same words that the spider said to the fly in that old nursery rhyme that Lavinia used to recite to the kids.

"No thank you," he tells her, watches that same old pout he remembers from his sunshine courting days, spent in the shade of Hazzard Square while parents watched over them from the Courthouse steps. Chaperoned, civilized, but even then couple could find themselves unsupervised moments to get up to no good. Oh, and Minnie, so pretty, so flighty and helpless, she knew all about those hidden moments and secret places. She'd been out there with more than one of Jesse's brothers, stealing kisses then slipping away before anything got too rough for her delicate sensibilities. But she teased, she made a man want her, before leaving him lonely on the banks of Hazzard Pond. "I ain't got time to be social," or to be daydreaming, but there's something to smell of her magnolia trees and the shade of her weeping willows that just sets his mind to remembering old times. "I just want to know what you got Luke into."

"Luke?" she asks, as though the boy wasn't here yesterday, likely standing in exactly this same spot, tolerating the woman's dotty ways with gritted teeth, and fingers ruffling through the hair at the back of his head. "Oh, you know, that boy never did come back for that truck of yours. Nor Bo, neither. You come for it now?"

"No, I ain't come for the truck." Eyes, the woman's got as clear-seeing a pair as she ever did. Never did seem to have the need for glasses, even to read. Which means she can see perfectly well that his pickup's parked not ten steps away from her porch, and there's no one that's come with him to drive an extra vehicle home. "I come to find out what's behind my boy being locked up and threatened with a ten year prison sentence."

"My, my, my," she chatters back at him, hand resting lightly over her heart. "Whatever has the boy done?" Swaying slightly; she'd like to convince him that she's about to faint so he'll reach out a hand to steady her. But he's not a half-naïve sixteen-year-old anymore. He reckons she can manage to hold herself upright.

"He ain't done nothing," he growls, and it's a good thing his mama raised him right, or Minnie would be verging on deaf with the tone of voice he'd really like to use on her. "Other than get caught hauling moonshine in your truck."

More than swaying now, she's threatening a full swoon. Hand off her heart and fluttering to her forehead like she's checking herself for fever, while the other fastens onto the bib of his overalls, compensating for how he won't wrap his arms around her to hold her up.

Elbow, bony thing, safe place to grab the woman. No way to mistake intentions when he grips hard enough to make sure she keeps her feet. Funny how she goes from being ever-so-slightly pale to the flushed cheeks of a schoolgirl caught mid-flirt.

"Don't you go pulling none of your shenanigans, Minnie," he warns. Artful, talented, the woman's got a way about her that steers discussion away from those things that make her uncomfortable. He's not so old that he'd forget how she conveniently took sick any time he cornered her over the way she toyed with one Duke brother, only to forget him and move onto the next. Funny how she only settled on which one she wanted after the rest were gone and it was just him. Easy to dismiss her then, when he'd already been married for years. "I want to know why you set my boy up that way."

"Set—oh my, Jesse, how you do go on. I don't know what you're talking about." Of course not. She never has, not when the subject goes deeper than how blue his eyes are, and the power and strength of his arms that make a small woman like her feel so safe. He knows this game, and yet he never has been able to settle his mind on whether it's played knowingly, deliberately, or if, just maybe, Minnie really lacks the brain capacity to follow the twists and turns of life outside of her daydreaming head. "Luke, if he was driving moonshine, he must've—I don't know where he got it from."

"He got it from right here, on this property, Minnie." There's no doubting that, not based on the facts as Bo presented them. How he got here no more than five minutes behind Luke (and the boy's lazy about time, so it might have been as much as ten to fifteen minutes, but no more than that), saw the Dukes' work truck still sitting in Minnie's yard, reckoned his charming cousin had saved plenty of the heavy lifting for him, but then he'd been redirected to head on over to Sweetwater and meet Luke there. After that came the whole story of 'shine bottles getting pulled out of the back of the panel truck that was supposed to have been packed up with clothes and costume jewelry, and maybe some old furniture. The finale was how Luke stood there, cuffed and framed, all the while shooing Bo away from the danger. There's no time in that whole story for his oldest boy to have stopped off somewhere and picked up a load of moonshine. Even if he was going to go breaking Jesse's promise to the government, which Luke would never think of doing. "Picked it up right here."

"Oh, no, he couldn't have. No, it must be a mistake." Backpedaling, so much so that she takes a step away from him, and pulls her arm from his grip. "It must be. I—I'd be glad to talk to J.D. about it, Jesse." No doubt she would, and she'd pull all these same maneuvers there. Hard to say how the man would take it if she did. Used to work mighty well on old J.D., the flirting and sweet talking, but that was before Lulu.

"Thank you Minnie." It's only polite to say it, after all. "But that wouldn't do no good. See, Luke's in the Claridge County jail." And no one in their right mind – not that Minnie's got a right mind, but even she ought to know better – would go using their charms on the likes of J.W. Hickman.

"Claridge?" she responds. "Oh, well, then it ain't so bad after all. Claridge is a fine, fine county."

She may or may not be putting him on, but Jesse knows when he's licked. The woman's committed to her crazy ways, and he's not going to get the tiniest speck of help from her.

"Thank you, Minnie," he says again. "You have a good day now." And as he turns to go back to his pickup, he reckons he should count his blessings. His toe, at least, hurts no more than it did when he first stepped up onto this dark porch.


	6. Sheriffs are Meant to be Seen, not Heard

**Chapter Six -- Sheriffs are Meant to be Seen and not Heard**

Hushes and hisses like radiator steam, steady tone, so he knows it's just the same assortment of bodies coming and going with barely a whisper. Silent deputy, offering nothing more than food and the brief respite of a stroll down the cinderblock hall to the pungent, unclean restroom. Back to his cell where yellow day fades to pink evening and black night. Somewhere after the point where his hand's not visible, even when it's directly in front of his face, and he's sure that everyone else that might be occupying this building has gone home, he starts to sing. Quietly, because it serves a singular purpose – proof, more than anything, that he's not losing his hearing. (His mind, however – that might just be gone.)

Whispers begin a new day after a night in which he's not completely sure that ever he slept. Same steamy sounds, sibilance and susurration, nothing solid enough to grab hold of. Until, quite suddenly, there are words. Clear sentences being spoken, but not to him. A conversation between cohorts, deputies discussing their duties for the day. Debating who is going to get stuck here with the prisoner while the rest of the staff goes off on an unspecified errand. No resolution is reached before the voices die back into the hissing steam of the day.

He may have been driven halfway around the bend, but he's nobody's fool. Luke Duke knows when he's been handed information as if it were candy on Halloween and he was nothing more than a kid peering through the eye holes of a sheet draped over his head. He reckons he's meant to make a break for it in that hour between noon and one that's been mentioned oh so audibly. And though he knows it's a set up, he reckons the only thing he can do to thank those helpful voices is to go ahead and comply.

"Much obliged," he mutters as he starts to plan.

* * *

There are whole months (or at least days, and if not that long, there are many hours in any given day) when all he wants is for Boss to leave him alone. To stop shoving at him, cornering him; to take his hollering, smoking, gorging mouth and go somewhere else. To give him room to be the stalwart, sturdy, strong sheriff that he is, that he's always been, whenever there isn't a marshmallow of a meadow muffin standing over him (which is really quite the feat, considering how Boss is at least half a foot shorter than him) and hollering in his ear. And when he's not pitching a fit he's pinching his pennies behind closed doors, but even in those moments, he never leaves Rosco alone, oh no. It's then that he's most likely to bellow, berating his lawmen for not knowing he's hungry or thirsty or just plain ornery.

"Ijit!" All those times he's wanted Boss to leave him alone, and the first time his wish comes true, he's backed into a corner by J.W. Hickman. Who is, so far as Rosco knows, supposed to be over in Claridge County, babysitting one Luke Duke. Heck, Hazzard's done enough of that little detail; he and Enos have lost more hours to jailing Duke boys – and trying to keep them there – than he likes to think about. Old Hickman can just go on back home and—"All right, Hickman. Just what do you think you're doing here in my squad room?" His shoulders shove back against the wall he got prodded into, and he takes a step forward. Teeny, tiny step, because Hickman gives no ground. "You just git, now, you just—now I'm mad."

Not half as mad, it turns out, as Hickman.

"Pipe down, pipsqueak," gets punctuated by the jab of a cigar. It's not the first time he's come close to getting singed that way. Then again, when Boss Hogg does it, it's almost an afterthought, ash trailing on blunt fingers. This right here looks like a deliberate attempt to burn one Hazzard County Sheriff.

"Jit!" he protests, but Hickman's unimpressed.

"I've only got one use for you," he gets informed. And that's good news, good news; it means this little encounter should be brief. Because there's alone, and then there's alone with Hickman, and in all the stupidest wishes of his lifetime, he never asked for the latter. Even that dipstick deputy Enos would be a sight for sore eyes right about now. Oh, he'd be a useless, twitching mess (except sometimes that boy gets his head all twisted up in right and wrong, and while that's his biggest flaw, there are moments when that kind of thing can be useful) but another target, a witness, someone to explain to the coroner what happened, any of those things would be welcome right now.

"One—one," he agrees. Or means to, but Hickman doesn't seem to want or need his affirmations the way Boss does. "One." But he can't stop himself from showing off exactly how much he understands what's been said to him, even if his voice does drop off at the end in deference to the disgusted look on Hickman's face.

"Knock it off, Coltrane." This is serious. Hairy eyebrows, mean like those caterpillars that eat little green leaves right down to the nubs, meeting up at the middle of an ugly twist of a face. Fist clenched, all rings and knuckle, and even if Rosco's got guns at his hips, that hand there looks like it could cause more pain than a bullet. Besides, Hickman's already showed off the weaponry strapped to his chest – a sheriff's pea-shooter's no match for that.

"Gyu." Whatever the man's got to say, he's listening.

"Here's what you're going to do for me." Straight to the point, Rosco likes that in a man. Even one as repugnant as the foul-breathed beast in front of him. Toothpaste would certainly help the condition, but it seems likely that Hickman has never used the stuff. "You're going to go talk to your fat brother-in-law," and so far, so good. He does that every day without some threatening creep cornering him into it.

"I don't know where he is," comes flying out of his mouth anyway. Maybe, just possibly, Boss has a point when he suggests how sheriffs are meant to be seen and not heard. Because even if what he's just said is true, it doesn't help his cause any, just brings that horrendous-smelling breath to a closer attack position. "Gyu," he repeats.

"Then you'll find him. And when you do, you'll suggest to him that thirty percent of his take on this county needs to be deposited in my personal account—"

"No, see," and there goes his mouth again. Running off and telling tales no one's asked it to tell, not even him. "The Boss ain't gonna do that, see, because he don't give me but twenty-five percent of twenty-five percent, which ain't quite thirty percent." Then again, it might be, seems to him the way Boss explained it, it was an awful lot of money for his little buddy to be giving up. "And he only does that because I'm the best sheriff money can buy." At least that's what Boss always says, and it ought to be a compliment, but somehow when it comes out of that fat little mouth it gets all twisted up into something a lot more snide.

"Deposited," Hickman interrupts, rude man. "Into my account, or he'll never see Luke Duke again." Finger poking into his gut and if he were a smart man he'd nod his head and trot right off in search of his brother-in-law before there's something a lot colder and harder pointing into his belly. But that finger seems to poke a few more words loose from where they ought to stay put in his chest.

"No, see, there's a flaw in that slaw." A giant, white-clad flaw. "Because see, Boss, he ain't never lost no love on Luke Duke." It's nothing Luke ought to take personally, though. Hazzard's Commissioner has never liked anyone named Duke.

"It doesn't matter," comes out low and menacing. It's that sound Boss Hogg always goes for, but somehow can't maintain. Those little, fat lips can't seem to help themselves; they just start yelling. "Whether he loves Luke Duke or not. The rest of the county loves Luke Duke," naughty, naughty, that's a lie. Rosco doesn't love Luke Duke, any more than Boss does. Oh, he might like the boy a little bit sometimes, when he's being still and quiet, when he's behaving himself. But the sheriff can count the number of times that's happened on one hand. "And they won't stand for him getting a life sentence in prison."

"Life? Ji-What in billy blue blazes are you taking about? A man can't get life for transporting whiskey." Even if his uncle did promise the U.S. of A. government that he'd never do it again. "Or for stealing a truck."

"Well, then," and finally, thankfully, the man takes a step back. "I'm just going to have to come up with some better charges, ain't I?" Another step away, but that finger's still pointing, so Rosco stays where he is. Seems like the sweat that's been oozing down his back probably has him permanently glued to the wall, anyway. "You just tell fatso," which isn't particularly nice, not when Hickman probably tips the scale at a good twenty-five pounds over Boss, "what I said. He'll come around. And if he doesn't," Hickman's just about to the swinging doors out of the squad room now. Just one more step and Rosco hopes the door doesn't hit him on the—"it'll be his hide," fanny on the way out.

But somehow the man manages to walk right through those doors without any troublesome incidents. Finally, Rosco lets himself slide away from the wall, then slump into the nearest chair. It's a good thing it was him that Hickman cornered. That kind of an encounter would have killed ten ordinary sheriffs.

* * *

Stink of beer on her shirt where it spilled, more on her hands. She really ought to have cleaned up before coming out here. Then again, it really would have been wise to have finished her shift, but she didn't. She just hollered for Jerry to cover her (which is going to bring him out from behind the bar to serve those few customers foolish enough to eat Boar's Nest roast beef, but she reckons he'll survive the effort) and sprinted out the door. Lost a shoe in the parking lot, seriously considered leaving it right where it lay, but it was only a split second delay to go back for it. Finding clean clothes, that would have taken a whole minute, and that much time she couldn't spare.

Besides, all that clean would have been wasted in the fifteen minute, clay-kicking drive back to the farm, or this last dusty loop around the edges of the Duke south forty, in search of the remote corner that Jesse will have taken Bo out to, setting him to work to distract him from pulling fool stunts in the name of rescuing Luke. The old man will like as not yell at her for bringing her car out onto these old wagon ruts where only a tractor was meant to go, but though it's lower slung than the General, lacks a fancy coat of paint and even a name, she knows how to handle her car every bit as well as her cousins know how to handle theirs. And if that's an extra little creak that her suspension has just picked up, Cooter will be glad to fix it for her in exchange for a gooseberry pie – and a kiss on the cheek. The softer touch, which has served her so well, and which her clodhopping cousins will never learn to accomplish.

"Girl," that's Bo, playing at being Luke. A little darker, less sweet, and that's not at all who her blonde cousin was meant to be. Behavior altered by the older boy's absence – she's seen it before, wonders sometimes whether she toughens up a bit when their protective cousin isn't around. "What are you doing out here in the middle of the day?"

"Cars wasn't made for plowing fields," her uncle concurs, shouting over the hum of her engine, but the old-timer knows better than that. If there's a crazy thing that can be done with a car, Jesse invented it. Bo and Luke might have cranked each maneuver up a notch, turning one-eighties into three-sixties and elevating hops into jumps, but the moves themselves were all born right there under their uncle's fingertips and the weight of his right foot. Cars may not be made for plowing fields, but Daisy is by far not the first Duke to use a car to get out into the middle of one.

"Enos," she says as she's shutting down the engine and opening her door. Dumb way to start the story, the two fool men in front of her are already smirking at what they think they know. Getting pictures in their heads of a blushing lawman stumbling over his two feet and asking her on a date, and they'd be only half right. Enos may have been flushed, and his ability to walk never has been exactly smooth or fluid. But he wasn't carrying flowers when he came to see her. He was carrying this—"Came by the Boar's Nest to tell me that Claridge County done put out a bulletin. There's been a jailbreak,"—bad news, enough that she hasn't had a clear thought since. Came home filthy, one shoe still sitting there on her passenger seat where she dropped it when she got into her car. Now she's trying to stand, one-footed, and she's dizzy. From the heat out here, the dust, the stench of beer on her clothes, from the worries that haven't gotten any better, even now that she's begun to share them. "In Claridge County. Escaped prisoner, presumed armed and dangerous."

Alarm, worry, and a hand reaching out for her. She's of half a mind to bat it away, she's not done talking yet. But it comes too fast or she moves too slow. Thick thoughts, sloshing and slopping around in her brain, but the air is thin, not enough of it to get all the way down into her lungs where she needs it to be if she's going to finish this story.

The memory of Enos' face flashes hazily in front of her, she can hear his hesitant words. Not wanting to tell her, but he had no time (and no excuse) to come all the way out to the farm and tell the menfolk. So he'd been forced to whisper it across the bar at her, fingers fiddling with an empty beer mug they'd picked up all on their own, dirty, leftover thing she'd wanted to take away from him, but holding onto it seemed to help him to talk. So she'd left him to it, ear tipped in his direction to hear his quiet words over the chattering buzz of the rest of the place.

"They reckon he's on his way to Hazzard," the escaped prisoner, that is. Confirmation, if they needed it, of the identity of the roving criminal.

Words surrounding her, not quite shouts, but they're loud enough to disrupt her thoughts. Frustrating when she's trying to remember the exact terminology Enos used.

"They're coming," she says, and there's not enough time to say all of it, not with those other words crowding close to her, not when she has to concentrate around that grip on her arm, so tight. "Claridge is coming here. To search. Eminent domain or something. Hot pursuit?" Anyway, the Claridge law had declared its intentions to march right into Hazzard and take over the courthouse, armed and with order to kill their escaped prisoner. All in the name of protecting Hazzard's innocent citizens against the dangers posed by the wanted man. "Martial law," she mutters, though Enos never said exactly that – those words are surely what he meant.

"Daisy!" she hears, the first clear word since the time she found her feet. Smell of stale beer, feel of her shirt clinging too close to her skin, heat and spots, and then there's nothing but the safety of Bo's arms around her, and darkness.


	7. Timing & Approach, Strategy & Technique

**Chapter Seven – Timing and Approach, Strategy and Technique**

Bits and pieces – not much, but they know some. What they saw on television, the stories in the Hazzard Gazette. Red-tinged images of a wasteland. Tired, thin men, Americans. Carrying assault rifles, magazines of cartridges slung across their chests. Just boys, but they were killers. Rules changed since the wars of their fathers; not all the dead were soldiers. Hard to say who was at fault when the civilians got killed, or hard to agree, anyway. Arguments had slipped out of the newspapers and radios, through the walls of homes and over the dirt roads until they crashed right through the cinderblock of the Boar's Nest. Brawls over events too far away to understand, but they were every bit as ugly as the homegrown kind of fights about who sold whom a goat with dried up teats or a hen that wouldn't lay.

By the time the Duke boy made it home, most of those blazing battles had burned down to embers. By then there were other things to fight about, like taxes and gas prices, and the value of mule powered vehicles.

But the questions remained. About exactly how crazy that war, that country, could make a man. And whether there was a hairline fissure left somewhere on that Duke boy, a flaw that, if struck the wrong way, could make him explode. Murmurs mostly died away when the boy settled back into the community, appearing to be largely the same fun-loving troublemaker he'd ever been.

But now they're circulating again. Rising and falling like wind over wheat tassels. What did he learn over there, what manner of weapons might he be willing to use, and _is Luke Duke a killer?_

* * *

Obstacles, a man faces nothing but frustration in his efforts to better himself. Why, if it wasn't for the selfishness of his constituents, greedily guarding their gains, ill-gotten or otherwise, he'd be a better man already.

Oh, and there are other obstacles to his betterment. Like Rosco's fat sister, who spends money faster than he can bring it home and hide it from her in that safe he had installed in the front hall. Excuses, reasons, she's got one for every pound on her body to explain where all the money goes. About how he's hard to feed (which isn't halfway true – he'll eat any cut of beef, so long as it's the finest), how her hair and nails have to be professionally perfected, and how she's got a beholden duty to be the best dressed woman in the church each Sunday, what with being the wife of a county official. And then there was that whole Rolls Royce fiasco, the car she absolutely had to have because the women at the Garden Club (or maybe it was the Ladies' Auxiliary) hated her. All the logic in the world couldn't change her mind (and the woman's never been anything like logical, so he wonders now why he wasted his time) and her screaming misery got to be too much for him, so he'd bought her the damned thing. Which she never drives because she's saving it for a special occasion, most likely defined as some expensive affair that he's got no intentions of taking her to. A wife (especially a Coltrane for a wife, and this isn't news, but he's got no one to blame but himself for this one) is a distinct liability.

And then there are turncoat allies, like Jesse Duke, who used to be something of a partner. Never entirely trustworthy old Jesse wasn't, always getting mixed up about trifles like right and wrong, as if such distinctions existed in the world of illegal whiskey. Sure, the younger version of the man would sometimes confuse good business sense with thievery, or run a perfectly acceptable batch of 'shine down a creek just because it didn't bead properly. It wasn't anything J.D. appreciated in the man, this bizarre adherence to quality when half his customers had long since given up their sense of smell, burned off their taste buds and misplaced their minds in deference to the liquor they so desperately sought. But he tolerated it because on those nights when Jesse couldn't make his own runs (which grew increasingly common after he lost his brothers and took in their children, with those sniffly little noses and their daredevil ways that led to more than one dash to the emergency room) J.D. made them for him out of the goodness of his little Hogg heart. And if he charged the customer more than Jesse ever would, if he pocketed the difference, it only made him look more favorably upon an otherwise frustrating partner.

Too bad, too bad, that when Jesse found out (must've been that old Josiah up on the pine bluff, man never did know how to hold his tongue, even before he developed a taste for 'shine) he took it so hard, but there wasn't a thing J.D. could do about it by then. Certainly not give the money back, not when the customers had paid it willingly, and not only that, he'd already entered it into his ledger books then stashed it away. No, there was no undoing it, and no reason to even consider such a thing. Sure, Jesse swore he'd never work with any Hogg for the rest of his born days, promised that he'd make sure J.D. never swindled another man, threatened to shadow him night and day until he changed his ways. Dukes always were sore losers, but he'd get over it. After all, those little brats he was looking after would get sick again; he'd need help, he'd need money for doctors and dentists and school clothes for ratty little children who were already growing like weeds out of farm dirt.

Never would have guessed how long that man could hold a grudge, how effective an obstacle he'd turn out to make himself. All but split himself into four, because those snotty-nosed kids all grew up every bit as stubborn as their uncle, with exactly the same foolish notions. About fairness and justice, and doing the right thing in a world where nice guys finish last. Just a bunch of blamed fools, sitting on the best topsoil in the county, and still unable to turn a profit.

Resourceful, clever, a man has to adapt to get around all the obstacles in his life.

"Well, well, well, well and well," speaking of obstacles. He lets his eyes trail up from the brown-shirted belly that he spotted first, but he knows who it is even before he tips his head back so far that something pulls in his neck – just to see the man's face. "If it ain't Rollo." Hickman's lackey, and how he got into this private office at the back of the Boar's Nest, silently stalking up from behind to trap him into this corner, Boss will never know. But he reckons he needs to retrain the wait staff out there on the rules and regulations behind who passes through that door. And he also needs to retrain his sheriff on being where there's trouble, even if he is the one who told Rosco to stay behind at the county building. Could be that his brother-in-law is about the biggest obstacle he ever invited into his life. "Where's your boss?" Because Rollo has never been on anything but the shortest of leashes.

"Not here," the oversized ape answers, stepping forward. Instinct makes Boss move back – never wise to get too close to the riffraff. "But he sent me with a message for you."

"Oh he did, did he?" It's not so much that he minds how his shoulders have to cramp inwards to accommodate the cinderblock walls of the corner he's trapped in. It's more about how his cigar is over there in the ash tray, burning down without ever getting close to his lips. He reckons that Rollo needs to deliver the message and get his extra-large carcass out of here so the cigar can get properly smoked (and the bonbons can come out of his desk drawer). "Just exactly what is this message you came all this way to give me?"

"He said," the goon answers and, smooth as butter melting on the corn cob, he pulls a gun from his jacket. Boss hears himself making sounds of protest, but old big and ugly, he doesn't even seem to notice. "It would have gone easier on you if you'd just given him your county. Now he's going to have to take it by force."

_

* * *

_

_Think boy_, that was Jesse's advice, something of a plea. _Think_, but he's barking up the wrong tree. Luke's the thinker and he's not here. That's the whole point. _Keep your wits about you _was Jesse giving up, letting him go.

Because someone needed to stay with Daisy, and they could both agree to that. The girl was distraught, dizzy. Insisting she'd best go back to work which meant that one of them needed to sit with her, to hold an icepack to her forehead and force her to rest for a few minutes.

The dispute was not over taking care of Daisy, or even which of them is most qualified to do it. Bo may be bigger than his female cousin and stronger, but all the size in the world doesn't matter against that girl. She's a Duke, stubborn, insistent, and has been older than Bo for their entire lives. She's never once listened to him, not unless he happened to be agreeing with her. Heck, she hardly pays Luke any mind, but Jesse – no amount of defiance will get her to her feet when it's her uncle's hand that's pressing against her shoulder to keep it pinned to the back to the couch.

The disagreement wasn't even about the fact that someone needed to look out for Luke, too. It emerged from the finer details: timing and approach, strategy and technique, things Bo doesn't have time for. Luke's the schemer, but he's not here to save himself. If Jesse reckoned there was strength in numbers, Bo couldn't argue with that wisdom. Perfectly logical and completely useless information, because when it came right down to it, Claridge County guns were drawn and trying to get a bead on Luke. There was no time to wait for backup - hell, he'd already wasted too much time disagreeing with Jesse. Bo had to get out there.

With his wits about him, which is how he comes to be skidding the General to a stop in front of the courthouse. A waste of time, most likely, but it's also the safest course of action. "Boss," he's hollering, even as he takes the cement stairs two at a time. Odds are the Hickman won't listen to reason no matter who it is that's doing the talking, but he sure as heck isn't going to pay the least bit of attention to anyone below him in rank. Temporary alliances, Dukes have made them with Hoggs in the past, and he's going to have to try to make one now. "Boss!" Even if every cell in his brain screams against it, and it takes more strength than reigning in Maudine when she wants to haw to his gee to keep himself focused on the task at hand.

Because Luke would stop at nothing to protect him if their roles were reversed, including putting himself directly into the path of a bullet. And Bo reckons it may still come to that, so even as he's yanking the leaded glass doors of the courthouse open, his mind is whirling with where his cousin will go when he's on the run. Snapshot of one still site after another clicks through his brain as he storms right through the swinging doors to the sheriff's squad room, still shouting Boss Hogg's name.

Wrong boss. Hickman's there, turning to face him as his slippery boot soles skid to a stop just inside the doors. Breath heaving up in him as his body struggles between standing his ground and sprinting out of this place at his top speed. Gets relieved of the decision-making when his arm gets grabbed from behind, twisted. Fights against it for all of a second until there's the poking pain of a gun barrel in his back. Goes limp with a sigh and, "Rollo," he guesses.

"Very good," Hickman congratulates. But he doesn't have time to impress this man with his powers of deduction. And this might not have been the person he intended to ask a favor from today, but what the hell. The current situation seems to have cut out the middle man.

"Gijit! Bo Duke, what are you doing here?" Or one of the middle men anyway. Rosco's around here somewhere, hiding behind a post or around a corner where he can only be heard and not seen. Babbling away, and Bo ignores him for now.

"Boss Hickman," is really the most important man in the room to him right now, even if Rollo is shoving at him from behind. "Luke – he ain't never brought no harm to you. Nor nobody." It's a start, but he's got to talk faster, what with the way Rollo clearly has designs on shoving him right past the Claridge County Commissioner. "He ain't armed, and he ain't stole nothing, nor knowingly transported whiskey." Downright personal, the way that gun keeps jabbing in his back.

"Move," gets grumbled from behind him.

"I'm going," he snaps, even if he's doing his best to stay rooted to this spot. Just long enough to make his case: "Let him go. Take me instead." Not that he has the first idea what he is offering himself up for, not that it matters.

Those gentle blue eyes, calm mask of a face – the image is permanently stored in his brain. Luke sending him home to safety when the danger was greatest, and it's only instinct to return the favor. All along, even up until the moment he stepped into this room and ran face first into his fears, his thoughts have been tangled up in selfishness. About how much he misses Luke, the fact that he forgot to thank him for letting him beg off the errand at Miss Minnie's, and then there were those thoughts about how he's always taken his big cousin's presence for granted. Never beyond the reach of a long arm, and he's been wondering whether he'll ever be able to stretch across the distance between them and pull Luke close to him again.

All those thoughts about himself and what he's lost evaporate when he offers himself up as prisoner in the place of Luke. Selflessness lends him bravery, makes him feel strong, effortlessly calm, just like his cousin has always been. For all of a second, and then it's gone with a laugh. Not his own, Hickman's.

"I've already got you," he gets informed. "I got no reason to give anything up."

Tripping over his own feet, Rollo shoves so hard. Never lets go of that arm twisted behind his back either, and Bo feels the muscles pull painfully. "Move," gets growled at him again.

Defeat. Coming here was supposed to be keeping his wits about him and first things first. He was only going to put himself under the gun if negotiations with Boss Hogg failed. Now he's getting pushed across the linoleum and up two steps toward the upstairs jail cell, and there's Rosco, cuffed and stuffed.

_Please Br'er Fox, whatever you do, please don't throw me into the briar patch…_

Back in those days when the kitchen table was taller than him, before he could reach anything on his own, and morning into afternoon stretched out endlessly as he tried to sit still long enough for Aunt Lavinia to call him a good boy and offer him a cookie, Luke used to read to him. Seemed like betrayal, his big cousin running off to school and leaving him behind every morning, but the trade off was the nights when that rough-edged voice would read him Uncle Remus tales. About how fools made mistakes and got themselves caught, but if they were very clever, there was still hope for them yet.

"Don't put me in there with him."

Insulted little look on Rosco's face, like it's never occurred to him that the distaste between lawmen and Dukes goes both ways. "Wijit," he defends.

"Move," comes from behind him again, could just be the only word Rollo knows.

"I mean it Hickman," he blusters. "Don't put me in there with him. I ain't going to be able to control myself. I'm liable to hurt him." Which would be a lie, except Rosco already seems hurt by the words alone.

"Oh, tiddly tuddly, Bo Duke," is how the sheriff covers up those wounded feelings. "You couldn't hurt me. I'm made of tougher stuff than that," he mutters. "Why I'll just, I'll go hand-to-hand with you any day," which sounds fine, except for how both hands are pinned behind Rosco's back right now by handcuffs. "Then, then you'll see."

Sardonic little smirk from Hickman; he likes the idea of a battle between Coltrane and Duke in a small cage. "Hurry up," he commands of his lackey, like he's just so tired of it all, but he's enjoying himself plenty.

"Don't do it, Rollo," is Bo upping the ante on the threat, but it's moot. His twisted arm finally gets released long enough for Rollo to unlock the cell door. Gun's still on him, so Bo doesn't do any more than stretch out those muscles that got cramped and pulled. "I mean it now."

Which might (and Luke's voice is there in his head, chuckle in the tone and telling him how he's overacting) be more than he needs to say.

"Cuff them together," is Hickman's next brilliant little insight, and just maybe he begged a little too hard not to get thrown into this here briar patch.

Rollo makes quick work of it, even if Rosco does ijit his objections at high volume. Clamps the cuff down tight around the bones on Bo's right wrist, twists the key to lock it like that, jams it into his pocket, then steps back onto the far side of the bars.

"Try not to kill each other," Hickman advises. There's a metallic click that Bo knows so very well as Rollo turns the key in the cell's lock. "At least not yet. Not until Rollo and I get back from hunting down your cousin."

"Hickman!" he hollers, and it takes everything in him not to grab onto the bars in front of him and shove with all of his might. "Don't you hurt him, don't—"

But he might as well be talking to the wind. Hickman and Rollo are gone, leaving the swinging doors to shush against each other while Rosco keeps muttering pointless threats into his ears.


	8. Free

**Chapter Eight – Free**

Foreclosing, negotiating, up to no good – all of these get postulated as the whereabouts of one County Commissioner Hogg. Who ought to be at the helm, in the center of town with his fist pumping up into the air, defending his county against what amounts to an invasion from the north. Not quite the War Between the States, but Hazzardites have their pride, and they don't want to become Southern Claridge County anymore than they want to be Yankees.

Wildfire rumors, flashing over from one flammable part of the county to the next. Whispers describing strangers spotted pacing the town square and emerging from the swamp. Dressed in black, seven feet tall, armed with everything from pitchforks to automatic rifles and hand grenades. Little green men, because some of the talk wafts out from those cabins in dark hollows where moonshine is the main source of nutrition, and alien invasion seems imminent.

Mini-skirmishes break out over the nature of the incursion; this is Hazzard after all, which has never been a precisely peaceful nor entirely unified county. There is, however, one common theme amongst the dissenting voices: Boss Hogg is off somewhere and up to no good, when he should be right there in town, fighting for the independence, well being, hell, the _life _of his county.

* * *

Easy, too easy. He knows better and doesn't. Someone wants him free, and it's got to be the same person that wanted him locked up. Dangerous to break out; he'd be a fool to stay put. Weighing one against the other and in the end it's the thought of missing out on the toddling years of his cousins' future babies that makes him run. He reckons that being Uncle Luke, the ex-con who shows up just in time for the next generation of Dukes to go off to school, unknown, unwanted, is more than he can bear. It's not like he's forgotten (or has any desire to relive) what it was like to come home after only four years in the military to find Daisy long-legged and Bo a football player, with neither of them giving the appearance of needing him anymore.

What he did forget (or at least mislay) was all of the vows he made to himself on that day when his family met him in Atlanta to bring him – khaki-uniformed, shorn-haired, tired and skinny – back to Hazzard for good. Simple little promises about appreciating the crisp air, the cumulus clouds, but particularly the misty mountains and their fuzzy green foothills. Soft-looking, cool, haze of fog washing them clean and fresh and, sprawled out in the back of the old pickup, his knee bumping against Bo's like it was making its own reacquaintance, he swore to himself that the passion he had for the geography would never waver nor be forgotten.

And yet, not a whole lot of years later, he got to taking them for granted again. Until today, hitchhiking dirt roads in days-old clothes, dirty and unshaven. Learns to love the hills of northern Georgia all over again, for their beauty, their familiarity, the way the land links its residents together. Could be that this little corner of Appalachia is the only place an escapee from jail in a hostile county, looking and smelling exactly like what he is, could manage to hitch a ride from a stranger. But the man who picks him up shares a stronger legacy with him than he does with the law of his own county: a moonshiner heritage, love of Appalachian soil, and an affinity for the mountains through which the old dirt roads wander.

"Much obliged," Luke murmurs as he's let out in the wilds of his own county, a good three miles from the center of town and more like thirteen from home. Wishes he had something to offer the older man who asked no questions other than his destination.

"Good luck to ya," comes the response that seems to indicate that there was no reason this man needed to be inquisitive; he recognized a fellow fighter of the system right off.

"You ever need a place to stay," Luke says, leaning back into the open window in the door he just closed behind himself. "We're out on Old Mill Road. Just don't bring no," he almost hates to put limits on the hospitality he's offering, but his got his family to think about, "evidence." Because moonshine, whether the Dukes brew it up themselves or just happen to have a guest that brings some onto their property, will land both him and Bo in exactly the same hot water he just jumped out of.

A wave, and the heavy blue car is gone, jolting and swaying back over the bumps of the road they just came up. Luke steps off the road and into the woods, where he'll disappear for as long as he can manage it. Eventually he's going to have to emerge, and as he walks his first crunching mile, flattening dead leaves in his wake, he picks his point of exit. Neither home nor town is particularly safe, but they're all the options he's got. Well, other than a still site, but that's a lonely, silent prospect for a man who has already spent about as much time in his own company as he can stand. Practical, important to be realistic, so he angles westward where town's one heck of a shorter walk from here than the more southerly route to home. Legs paradoxically tired from disuse, he reckons to take it easy on them.

Still a danged long way, though, for a man whose only companionship is the shush-shush of leaves underfoot. Not all that different from the hisses of the Claridge County jail, but the smell of the air around him is as sweet as the blooms that decorate the dogwoods, and in between the budding branches of trees, there's the expanse of blue sky. He's free.

Somewhere around the time that the sweat that's been trickling down from his hairline manages to saturate his brows and make its way over the ridge of bone to sting his eyes, the trees thin, and the leaves give way to concrete. Careful here, where the only way to hide himself is to be nonchalant, to walk neither fast nor slow, and to give every appearance that he belongs right here on the sidewalks of Elm Street. Seems to work fine, what with how those few other people that are out here walk in tight clumps, purposefully, and keep to their own conversations. No one looks up long enough to recognize Luke Duke strolling the streets. Or slithering up the fire escape ladder to a perfectly safe haven on the rooftops of Hazzard Square. Hopping gaps and shimmying across pipes is child's play compared to sauntering the sidewalks below and trying to blend with the scenery, when Dukes have always stuck out like sore thumbs. One last loping leap and he's as safe as a baby in its mother's arms, two flights up from the greasy concrete floor of Cooter's Garage. On his belly, legs over the edge, and his hands catch the drain pipe. Slow slide until there's glass in front of him. Natural as breathing, he locks his legs down tight around the pipe, freeing his hands to open the oversized window, then yank himself inside. Pulls the curtains closed behind him and finally lets his breath come naturally. Comfortable, halfway peaceful for the first time since he crossed over the Sweetwater County line a couple of days back.

Until the bang comes from below him. Slow and easy, he edges toward the railing that runs the length of the loft, tensing freshly relaxed muscles in preparation to attack or defend, whichever seems more appropriate. Weight low and ready to make the leap down a flight when he sees a familiar mop of blonde hair.

"Rosco," comes the complaint, wafting up from the floor below, and Luke holds his horses. Much as he's missed Bo, there's no need to go diving right back into jail by plopping himself directly into the Hazzard Sheriff's sights. "Watch your dang hand, would you?" Interesting command on Bo's part, makes Luke huddle closer to the edge of the loft, shift his weight leftward to look around that rolling toolbox of Cooter's.

"Ijit!" And there's the man himself, head not more than six inches from Bo's. "Don't you threaten me, Bo Duke! I'll just, I'll—"

"Cuff me and stuff me, I know." Awkward how the two of them sit – or maybe it's squat, a hypothesis that gets supported by the wobbling sway of the sheriff's body that makes Bo glower – so close and squabbling like an old married couple, but no one's chasing or running. "Now hold still so I don't cut your dang fingers off."

"Ooh," Rosco bays like a hound, but he stays where he is. Looks almost like a child's game of marbles, except there's no chalked circle on the ground in front of them. Luke reckons a closer look is in order, makes his quiet way over toward the ladder and down, though he suspects the two of them are so engrossed in whatever they're doing that he could bang around all he wanted to and still not draw their full attention.

"Dang it!" Bo snaps again. "You got to help me. I can't do this one-handed."

"I ain't gonna help you, not nohow. Why, you're just lucky I come this far with you. It ain't right, what you did. Ijit!" A clink, a clatter, and Luke looks back over his shoulder to see Bo's head drop. Three more rungs and he'll be on the concrete not ten feet from the odd couple behind him. "I don't know what you done to my jail, but I ain't paying to get it fixed. Jit, just watch what you're doing. And these here cost fifty-two dollars and thirty-seven cents, and it ain't coming out of my paycheck."

_These here_, it turns out, are handcuffs. Luke can see now how there's a chain between Bo's right wrist and Rosco's left, and the way his cousin's struggling mightily to wield bolt-cutters in his non-dominant hand. Not that it would matter – there's no way to clip anything one-handed, and it doesn't sound like the sheriff is inclined to lend a hand.

"Rosco," is Luke's kid-cousin's eye-rolling attempt to keep his temper. It's the same exercise in futility that it has always been. "I ain't done nothing to your jail. That door ain't locked right since nineteen seventy-five." Riled and frustrated, and Bo's giving away privileged information like it's that free extra-salty popcorn at the Boar's Nest. "And if we don't get these danged things off—"

Boots, Bo finally catches sight of them, now that they're practically under his nose. Pause, then a slow drag of eyes up from the worn black leather, over dirty blue jeans and a faded plaid shirt, and then, finally, dark blue eyes meet his own.

"Luke!" he hollers out, and his body gets the better of his brain. Legs fighting to stand up out of that deep squat, but he's got a dead weight on his arm that's not half as young and limber as he is. Rosco topples, falls, and brings Bo back down with him. One big heap of blue and yellow on the floor, Duke mingling with lawman in a way the two were never meant to.

Hands on his hips, Luke studies the mess at his feet. "I been gone two days, and this is what you get up to?"

"Luke." Funny how Bo's tone switches right back from excited to annoyed. "Real cute." Boy never has liked getting laughed at, though if he had the first idea how badly Luke's stomach muscles needed exactly this kind of stretching, he'd likely be more patient about it. "Knock it off and help us out, would you?"

Luke grabs the bolt cutters from where they clattered to the floor, but it seems like that's not all the help his cousin needs. Disentangling himself from Rosco Coltrane isn't going particularly well. Eventually, when he's had enough humor for the afternoon, he steps into the fray, helping to lift both men to their feet. Gets himself poised to snap the cuff off of Bo's wrist, but Rosco jerks his hand away.

"Rosco!" Bo hollers, and Luke can hardly blame him. From the looks of it, his wrist is already scraped raw from this little battle. "Be still."

Luke shrugs. "'Less you want to spend twenty-four hours a day with him, Rosco, I'd recommend you let me get them things off you. And I'm telling you right now, it ain't no fun to eat next to Bo Duke," who scarfs food down like tomorrow's the first day of a six-month famine, and he isn't shy about swiping an ear of corn off his neighbor's plate, either. "Plus, he snores."

Sour face from Bo, but it's only the truth, and the sheriff knows it. After all, Dukes don't lie, but they do spend time in the pokey where Rosco brings them their meals and supplies them with pillows.

Still the man's got to mull it over some more until Luke promises, "We'll pay for the handcuffs, Rosco. No," he interrupts, before a single _shame-shame-everyone-knows-your-name_ can be uttered. "I ain't got the money now, and I don't know how we're gonna get it, neither. But we'll pay." Because otherwise Boss would add it to the many debts he reckons Rosco owes him, and garnish the poor man's wages for the rest of his life. And Dukes are nothing if not resourceful.

Finally there are two hands in front of him, both steady. He clips the cuff around Rosco's wrist first, just in case the sheriff gets second thoughts about holding still for him. There's a prolonged "Ooo" of complaint, some kind of sympathy with the severed metal, but when it swings free, Rosco seems happy enough to get his hand back.

"Now, how in the _world_," he asks, as he fits the bolt cutters onto the cuff that's clipped so tightly around Bo's wrist, "did this happen?" There's a click then a clink as gravity claims what's left of the handcuffs. Then there are arms around him, holding tight. The body fitted up against his is trembling, and there's that anxious little voice in his ear.

"Luke," it says, so he drops the bolt cutters onto the tool cart and wraps one arm around Bo's waist, lets the other tangle into blonde curls. Closes his eyes against the assault of worry and guilt that he can feel in the way his cousin holds on.

"Easy, Bo," he whispers, close and quiet where he figures Rosco won't hear. "It's all right. I'm all right." He understands this need of Bo's to touch, to feel the evidence that what he sees is real, to assure himself that his kin is safe and healthy. The youngest Duke has always been tactile, and if sometimes Bo's need to sling an arm across Luke's shoulders can grate against his nerves, today he reckons it's been long enough since someone touched him at all that he doesn't mind Bo's grasping affection. Just holds on and waits for his cousin's emotions to settle down.

* * *

It's touching (really is, in it's own way) how the Duke boys are having a happy little reunion, but he reckons it's time they stopped fussing over each other so someone can give him some answers.

"All right you Dukes." Has the urge to tell them to break it up, but this isn't the Boar's Nest and it's not a fight. Just those danged Duke boys being too wrapped up in each other to pay attention to bigger things. Like his little fat buddy. "Luke, now, you're supposed to be in the Claridge County jail." Seems to him that's how this whole dang mess got started; most of Hazzard's messes start with one Duke boy or the other. Then again, he and Bo are supposed to be in the Hazzard County jail, except that boy broke them out, halfway against Rosco's will. "And I know Boss ain't paid to get you out."

That finally brings the older Duke boy's eyes away from their tight focus on his cousin's right wrist. Fingers running gently over scrapes no deeper than top layers of skin, but that boy always has been intense when it comes to his younger cousins getting hurt. Old Luke there thinks nothing of pushing and shoving people out of his way – even if the ones he's jostling are the duly constituted law of the county – to tend to any injuries Bo or Daisy might have, even if they aren't even serious enough to draw blood.

"Far as I know," and those eyes – that never cease to startle him with how powerfully blue they are – squint down. "Wasn't never no bail ever set for me. And why would Boss pay it, anyways?"

So it's true then, what Hickman said when that overgrown goon Rollo was busy wrenching Rosco's arms right out of their sockets (and he wouldn't mind someone caring about the pulled muscles he's got from that little struggle, but the way in which Lulu has looked out for him has always been entirely different from the way Luke watches over Bo), about how Boss made the wrong choice when it came to the Duke boy. Up until now he could write it off as lies and threats, but now it's serious.

"We got to save Boss," he realizes, but those Duke boys, they're just both eyeing him skeptically. "Ijit!" he adds, because they need to get moving and those two ingrates in front of him seem perfectly content to just stand there staring at him. "Just, git," he tries, but then it comes to him. Like always, he's just going to have to take care of everything himself. Week after week, seems like there's always someone in trouble, and when it comes right down to it, Rosco has to handle all the problems as they arise because his dipstick deputy—"Enos?" he mutters, reckons he's done it aloud, what with how those Duke boys heads cock to the side. But he doesn't have time to deal with them, not when Boss has been abducted, probably tortured at the hands of Hickman, and Enos is—well lord knows where that dipstick is, but he could be in trouble too.

It's a difficult job, one that would kill ten ordinary men, but someone's got to do it. Rosco turns on one foot (and it's not his fault that the filthy mechanic that owns this place never bothered to level the floor nor wipe up even a drop of the grease that has fallen there over the years – if he stumbles over a crack or slips off his feet, it's got everything to do with Cooter's slovenly ways) with every intention of getting out of this place, out to the street where he can—

But there's a hand on his arm, then another grabbing onto an elbow. Duke boys holding him back and if they also manage to keep him from slamming down hard onto the concrete below him, that's got to be coincidental. Why those two boys, they've never done a darn thing be helpful in all their born days.

"Settle down, Rosco," Luke says, calm, quiet, close to his ear.

"Ijit!" is his perfectly logical answer to that. Just as reasonable is the way he shakes his arms out of their clutches the second that the ground is solid under his feet again. "Don't scuff me."

Luke's hands are up in surrender; best look Rosco's ever seen on the boy. Bo isn't half as smart, lets his loud mouth get the better of him.

"Fine, Rosco," and that's another thing, right there. These boys are nothing more than kids, and not only that, they're riffraff. They've got no business calling the superior officer in the Hazzard County Sheriff's Department by his first name. "We was just trying to help you."

"Help me? Help me?" There are more important things he could be saying, better ways of using his tongue than to repeat himself. And yet, when it comes right down to it, he never has had a whole lot of control over his mouth. It's always said the wrong things, and loudly, and it's managed to get itself washed out with soap many a time. For his own good, that was what his Mama always said, but it didn't help any. Sparkling as it might have been after a thorough cleansing, his mouth still managed to come out with naughty-naughties. "You want to help me? Then you," pointing to Luke, "go back to jail." Yeah, the boy has no intentions of doing _that_, not with the way his lips press together in dismissal of the idea. "And you—ijit!" There's nothing Bo can do for him, not unless he can use that blonde charm that oozes out of every one of his pretty little pores to soften Hickman's heart when it comes to Boss. But that would only work if Claridge's Commissioner actually had a heart.

"Whoa, whoa," Luke's saying. Soothing really, and Rosco knows better than to give into it but, "Slow down now. Start from the beginning," there's something comforting about the way this boy always takes charge, even when he's got no business doing so.

"Hickman's kidnapped Boss," he finds himself confessing. "Because he wouldn't pay ransom," which is not the word Hickman used, but it's what he was asking for all the same, "on you."

"And," Bo adds, leave it to that boy to start yammering even if he wasn't asked to. "He's done took over the county. He's claiming eminent domain or something. There's a whole militia from Claridge out there hunting," deep swallow, and it's funny how Bo is taller than both of them, heck, he's wider, too. And yet the image that comes to mind is of a much younger version of the boy, eyes raised to look up into the face of his older cousin. "For you. And what they're armed with ain't exactly squirrel guns."

If that scares Luke, he never shows it. Just takes the smallest corner of his own lip between his teeth and stares off into nowhere. Two, three seconds, tops, and the boy's face just about glows. He's got an idea. "We'd best get some help out here. Bo, get on the CB," because the youngest Duke is not a wanted man, "and call everyone in here."


	9. Fools for the Love of Money

**Chapter Nine – Fools for the Love of Money**

Two, such a simple concept. Plus another two, makes four. Four Dukes and they have a habit of traveling in pairs, threesomes, packs. Easy enough to locate one by looking for another.

Outsiders, only fools who don't know any better, would bother searching the streets of Hazzard for a wanted man with the last name Duke. Oh, sure, Luke Duke may be on those very streets (and if he is, then Bo Duke is no more than the width of a stock car's front seat away from him) but even assuming that's where he is, there'll be no catching him there. To catch a Duke all you need is another Duke. But there's not a mouth in all of Hazzard – not even the bitter ones that resent the way young Bo can have any girl he wants just by flashing some teeth, or the crazy ones who've spent too many years enjoying the moonshine that flows like water through the land – that's going to admit this fact to the invading lawmen from another county.

If they really want Luke Duke (and there are those who doubt that they do) they're going to have to figure it out on their own.

* * *

Luke's hide, he really ought to tan it. For breaking out of jail, for running away from a charge, trumped up though it might have been. For going on the run through hostile territory, for showing up here on friendly ground. For not checking the contents of the truck Minnie sent him off in, even if she is supposed to be something of a family friend. For getting caught, for attracting trouble, for being a Duke. For making his aging uncle worry about him. That hide would be best tanned, if only Jesse wasn't so danged glad to see it.

Seems like his oldest might be happier with a tanned hide, too, but he tolerates the opposite. A hug, and Luke even lets his uncle cup that unshaven cheek in his hand, all the better to take a close look at the boy. To see whether he eaten well enough, gotten sleep, and then there's that other thing he studies his nephew for. Dark thoughts, heavy burdens, deep worries – this youngster has a tendency to tangle himself up in his own head. Hard to say whether he's doing that now, not when his patience for being held onto runs out before Jesse can get himself a good feel for the boy's mood. Daisy aids and abets Luke's escape from his uncle's grip; she wants a hug all her own, and that makes perfect sense. Girl is just as protective of her cousins as they are of her, and she blamed herself for the older boy's incarceration every bit as much as Bo did. Guilt and worry had as much to do with her fainting spell this afternoon as the heat did; seeing Luke safe and alive marks the first time her color's been right since. There are others in line behind her: Cooter with his shoulder slap, then Enos pumping Luke's hand up and down at an alarming rate while grinning that stretched-plastic smile of his.

"All right, you Dukes," is just Rosco, reminding them all that he's there. Jesse considers hushing him until the just-got-out-of-jail-welcome-back-to-civilization ritual is completed (which the sheriff knows as well as anyone else in the room, having witnessed it in his own jail at least once a week), but the interruption spurs a change in the posture of both of his nephews.

"Rosco there," Luke starts and Jesse reckons that even if the boy has been tangling himself in dark thoughts for the last two days, about the best cure for it is this right here. Taking charge, making plans, ordering people around and so long as he's respectful how he goes about it, his uncle's ready to leave him to it. Mostly. "Has been telling us some interesting things. Seems like I was set up," and that's not news. There was never a doubt about whether Luke would willingly get behind the wheel of a truck that was filled with jugs of moonshine. "As the bait in a trap meant to catch Boss."

Daisy snickers first, wide eyed kind a bubbling laugh that sets Enos to giggling just on principle. "Boss?" she says, and then Cooter joins in with his fool's chuckle. It's not funny, not much anyway, except the part where Boss would care if something bad happened to Luke. But Bo's smile is loose and easy, and there's no resisting that, so Jesse lets himself laugh a little bit. Room is vibrating with happiness, all except Luke (who is pretending to have hurt feelings, oh, but it's an act and not a very good one, either) and Rosco, whose twitch and verbal tics are what brings the whole bunch of them back down to earth.

"Boss has been kidnapped," Luke informs them, and each and every one of them sobers up right quick.

A little bit of guilt there in Daisy's eyes gets punctuated by a, "Kidnapped?" from Enos. The boy's stance changes, rigid and at the ready. Matches, now that he bothers to take good look at the sheriff, Rosco's straight spine. "Is that true, Sheriff?"

"Ijit!" Earnest as the question was, it was a mistake. Old Rosco there has chosen to be insulted that anyone would doubt it. "Of course it's true, Enos! You dipstick!"

"Sorry, Sheriff," comes the chin-to-chest, appropriately submissive answer. Daisy pats the deputy's arm in sympathy, and instantly the dispute disappears from the young man's mind.

"Anyway," his impatient older nephew continues, head shaking at the foolishness of bickering lawmen. And Jesse would have a certain amount of compassion for the boy's annoyance, if only he and Bo didn't squabble in exactly the same way. "Apparently Boss Hogg was supposed to pay ransom on me, and when he didn't, Hickman came here and kidnapped him."

Some people are fools for love, and others are fools for money. But the most dangerous kind are the ones that are fools for the love of money. J.W. Hickman hasn't exactly ever been a good man, but this right here represents the lowest he's ever slunk.

"What I ain't figured out," his boy goes on, "is why Hickman let me go."

"Let you go?" That's not exactly the way Jesse heard it. Or any of them in this room, actually.

"Not exactly let me go," Luke confesses, his hand waving through the air in dismissal of semantics. Words, twists of his tongue and this boy can tell things the exact opposite of how they are without even lying. Always wisest to keep close tabs on his oldest nephew. "Made it easy on me by leaving the keys in plain sight and making sure I knew there'd be no one around to get around to caring what I did with them keys once I figured out how to get ahold of them. And laying my knife right next to them keys, so's I'd have an easy time picking the lock on the back door instead of having to go out the front past the one guy they left behind." Then again, in this case he was telling pretty close to the truth. Hickman let him go. Armed and dangerous, with a half-dull bowie knife.

"That's easy," Bo butts in with an answer to the original question. "What does Hickman want?"

"Shoot fire," Cooter replies, which just goes to prove that even an untidy brain can figure that one out. So long as they've been in the county all day to hear the way their friends and neighbors have been murmuring the news to one another. "Ain't nothing that old boy wants more than to take over the county. And with Luke there as an escaped prisoner—"

"He could come in on that eminent domain thing," Bo finishes.

"But then why kidnap Boss?" That's Daisy, jumping in wherever her cousins are going. All her life, and if he or Lavinia ever had designs on holding her back from chasing after them, it wasn't about to happen. Girl knows her own mind, and if she's finally taken to wearing dresses half the time, she's still a tomboy at heart.

"Well," and Luke's eyes are focused on nothing and everything, all at once. "He still wants his ransom, I imagine. Even if he has taken over the county. He gets Boss, shakes down Lulu—"

And that's as much as Rosco can stand. "Ijit!" he interrupts. "Lulu!" His fat sister, right in the line of fire.

"Yeah, but that ain't the worst of it," Luke says, his scheming brain still following whatever dark track he reckons Hickman's mind has already gone down. "What's he gonna do with Boss when he's got his ransom? Not let him go." No, that would be counterproductive, letting J.D. resume running the county. And it's not like turning him loose so he can go squealing to the governor about how his county got usurped out from underneath him would be smart. No, Hickman's plans for Boss have to be a lot uglier and more complicated than setting him free at the end of all of this.

"Please," and it's the sanest, the calmest and most rational the sheriff has sounded in years. "You got to help me save Boss Hogg." It's also the most heartrending sound those usually flapping lips might ever have made in their whole life. Aching, wet, like choked back tears. Passive, sitting on the same pile of tires he's been on since Jesse walked into this place, and begging.

"All right, Rosco," Jesse consoles him. "Luke's got a plan." Because he must, or he wouldn't have called everyone in here. Wouldn't have had Bo hollering over the CB about how everyone needed to come to the rodeo, code words for _meet us in town_. Wouldn't have pulled him away from where he was still tending to a pale Daisy, wouldn't have tracked Cooter (or Enos, especially Enos) down from where they were both on the road, doing their jobs. Wouldn't be standing there with that glow in his eyes.

"All right," the instructions start, and everyone huddles around Luke like it's nothing more than a football game and he's calling plays.

"Jesse, Daisy, I need you to go over and see Miss Lulu. Find out if they've made the ransom ask yet, and if they've told her where to make the drop. Cooter," he turns and points to the mechanic. Must've been a good Sergeant back in his Marine Corps days. Boy doesn't talk about that part of his life, but there's plenty of evidence of his skill in the way he handles his peers and superiors alike. "You go out in the wrecker and just look for anything out of place. Car tracks on abandoned property, a light on where there shouldn't be—"

"I know the drill," the mechanic assures him with a wave of his hand.

"Just stay alert," Luke tells him, code talk that reminds the mechanic not to go off drinking or carousing in the middle of an assignment. It's been known to happen. "Enos, go out on patrol; try to look normal." It's not meant to be an insult, and fortunately the deputy is too good a sport to take it that way. "Rosco, go with him, but ride in the passenger seat and keep your head down. Don't let Hickman or any of his men see you or they'll know something's up. They probably ain't figured out that you escaped yet, and the longer they don't know that, the better for us. And both of you – keep you eyes open for anything out of place. Now me and Bo's—"

"Not going anywhere." He's been quiet long enough, letting his oldest boy be his normal, bossy self, but when it comes right down to it, Jesse can pull rank. And he's got every intention of doing so right now. "Whatever you was figuring on doing with Bo, he's just going to have to handle it all on his own. You," and he points his finger right up close to Luke's face. Makes the boy take a step back, and that's good. It's about time he remembered his rightful place. "Ain't setting foot out of this here garage as long as there's armed men out there hunting for you." The fool opens his mouth to argue, but Jesse's come close enough to losing this boy once already. "No arguments."

* * *

Luke's been grounded. It's just about the funniest thing that's happened since the smug one packed a dud dynamite arrow on that run of Swamp Molly's. Oh sure, his cousin doesn't see the humor in his current situation, any more than he did back when that truckload of artillery didn't blow up. (And in truth, it's probably best that the dynamite was a dud – no telling how high that pile of explosives would have gone, or where the remnant parts would have landed.) Then again, Luke's sense of humor has been known to give up the ghost, only to revive itself in the next minute in the name of making fun of Bo.

He slings an arm around old grumpy with some loose plan of offering comfort in the form of a jibe (because there's no way his tough-as-nails cousin would allow himself to be genuinely sympathized with) but intentions get lost in how good it is have Luke close, safe, to all but feel the blood running through his veins. "I'll keep you posted," he promises.

"We'll all keep you posted," Cooter agrees. "With that there repeater on the roof, you can hear any of us, anywhere we go, even them old Indian caves."

His cousin's head drops, and if his arms never come out of that tight fold across his chest, he's at least silently acknowledging that he's going to obey their uncle and sit this one out.

"All right," Luke says, resuming command just about where he left off. "Everybody tune it to channel twenty-eight. Check in regular and meet back here in an hour, no matter what you find – or don't." Sigh, rise and fall of breath right there under Bo's arm. As everyone starts to scatter to their various vehicles, Bo stays behind those extra few seconds.

"I know you don't want to be cooped up no more, Lukas." Because Duke boys don't do lockup very well, even if it is only imposed by the simple orders issued by loved ones instead of lawmen locking them behind bars. "But if it keeps you safe, I reckon it's for the best." His arm comes away from Luke's shoulders to swat at that hard belly underneath those folded arms, then he trots off, doesn't have to look back to know his older cousin's rolling his eyes at the notion of worrying over his own safety.


	10. Equal Justice for All

**Chapter Ten – Equal Justice for All**

Loyalty is a notably transient trait in Hazzard's lawmen. Once – and not all that long ago, either – Sheriff Coltrane was a reasonably reliable man. At least that's the story, and there seems to be plenty of supporting evidence in the memories of those who temporarily lost their liberties because old Rosco caught them in some legal transgression or other. Equal justice for all, which meant equivalent nights in jail for indiscretions running from fighting to public drunkenness (though the standard for intoxication was fairly simple – if Rosco said you were drunk, you were and no amount of arguing to the contrary would convince him otherwise) and no one was innocent. Might not have been exactly ideal, but the sheriff was loyal to the law and the law only.

Word got around in record time when Jefferson Davis Hogg proposed to Lulu Cotrane. Little Hogg's feet were expected some seven months hence; no other reason explained the haste with which the two were married. Now, three years and one defeated pension later, it's clear that the only thing the Hoggs gave birth to was the corruption of one Hazzard Sheriff. Loyalties switched as easily as an electric light bulb, and it wasn't half the surprise it wanted to be.

Enos Strate has been the subject of speculation since school was out at seventeen and he went off to the Police Academy. Moonshining stock, and there he went, stumbling over to the other side. Apparently had his affable father's approval, which only made the murmurs grow more insistent. Money shifted hands in back rooms and under the shade of live oaks, livestock got wagered and the liquid gold of Hazzard's hills got put up as collateral in bets on which way that boy would swing. Four years later, mutterings persist over who really won and whether the Smiths' goat ought to be gnawing on old Johnson's grass after all. By all appearances the boy is a straight arrow, but is it really possible for a man to mean well and still be so completely accident-prone-bordering-on-incompetent?

Does Hazzard have any _real _law at all?

* * *

Uncle Jesse, when it comes right down to it, is a man. Older, maybe, calmer than her cousins, but no more resourceful, not when it comes to emotions. He stands there and fiddles – first with his watch, but Daisy glowers at him for that because it gives the impression they've got somewhere to be other than here comforting a woman whose husband's been kidnapped and carted off to places unknown – then with the fringed strings that have worn their way loose on the seams of his overalls.

"Aw, Lulu, sugar," Daisy croons, reaching an arm as far around her friend's soft shoulders as it will go. "He'll be all right, I just know he will." Tissues strewn all across her coffee table; the poor woman's been crying for awhile. It's about the only clue they've got to go on so far, what with how everything Lulu tries to say comes out in that unintelligible screech she uses when she's distressed. It's the main characteristic she's got in common with her little brother, this tendency toward babble when she's upset.

Tentative coughing sounds, and her Uncle's mighty close to digging the toe of his work boots into the deep pile carpet on the Hogg's living room floor. Clueless and squirming with the desire to be anywhere but here. _Dang Luke and his hare-brained plans_; she can just about hear his thoughts on the matter. And in case she can't, here comes that coarse tongue to say it out loud.

"Now Lulu," isn't exactly what she expected, though the tone is just as gruff as she'd anticipated. "You got to pull yourself together."

Men. Just _men_, with all their insensitivity and abrupt ways. Always pushing and shoving for information and they don't have the first idea that the best way to get it is to—

Movement under her arm, and when she tips her head that way she catches Miss Lulu wiping at her eyes.

"All right, Jesse," she says, and her tone has dropped back toward its more normal, matronly range.

"Now, that's more like it," her uncle responds, offering up that squinty-eyed smile that's patronizing and reassuring all at once. Takes Daisy back to her scrape-kneed youth, makes her halfway wish she was still naïve enough to believe that whatever the problem is, Jesse's lips contain enough magic to kiss it all better.

Lulu's answering smile wavers, but it's there, because no one would dare to sass Uncle Jesse even if he was being unreasonable. Daisy sighs at the stupidity of it all, how her uncle does all the wrong things but they work anyway. Duke men are ridiculously lucky, because they sure as heck aren't half as charming as they think they are, and that's all there is to it. She keeps one arm protectively around Lulu, because even if her uncle's wheedling a smile out of the woman now, there'll be more tears in a few minutes.

"All right now, what did they tell you to do?" The kidnappers, who did call her to arrange ransom. This much information got imparted before poor Lulu dissolved into tears.

On those rare slow afternoons at the Boar's Nest (and even more infrequent evenings off), when the heat hangs heavily in the airless bar and hallucinations are just a matter of course, she thinks about it. Love, marriage, children. Lifelong romance, maybe, someone to hold onto through thick and thin. Like Lavinia and Jesse, sort of, though most of their days were complicated by raising children that weren't theirs, by running a legal farm and an illegal still. Made them partners, but she wonders sometimes whether they were ever lovers. (And then remembers all over again about how sweet they could be on Sunday evenings, cuddling close on the couch or the porch, and sometimes they'd go to bed early so—her thoughts stop there, half out of squeamishness and the rest out of respect.)

And the better half of the other example of wedded bliss that she's been able to study sits in front of her now, red-eyed with worry. Up until today it's been possible to reduce the Hoggs' marriage to one of convenience. The intermingling of two clans for the sole purpose of complete domination of the law of the land, and to share in the wealth gleaned from that authority. And it doesn't hurt, really, that Lulu is a good cook and Boss a better eater. Apart from those few things that the couple works cooperatively on, there's never been any evidence of harmony or genuine love – more like demands on one another and high volume negotiations of said demands. Now for the first time, she sees the road signs that have been quietly glowing around her all along; the ones that reveal that the relationship must have its tender moments, even if those are usually hidden from the prying eyes of Hazzard.

"They want a quarter of a million dollars," Lulu shrieks all over again. Makes Jesse wince, makes Daisy tighten her hold on those soft shoulders. Keening sort of sound and she's not going to melt back into a puddle of tears; Miss Lulu is intent on loudly expelling her demons instead. "A quarter of a million, Jesse! I ain't got that much, and if J.D. does, I ain't got the first idea where he's hiding it," and Daisy reckons the number one place to look would be that safe in the Boar's Nest, but she never gets a chance to say so, because Lulu's not done. "And he'd kill me if I paid it to them anyway."

"Well now, Lulu, we'll cross that there bridge if we come to it," Jesse counsels, which is better than what ran through Daisy's head: _they'll kill_ him_ if you don't_. Must be Luke's influence on her; she's not one to think that way, and besides, she's not sure Boss Hickman is that evil. Oh, rumor suggests that he is, but if he'd ever done half of what people say he did, he'd likely be in prison. Isn't anyone powerful enough to get away with some of those things. "What did they tell you to do with the money?"

The body under her arm relaxes a little bit. Seems like Lulu's catching a gist of what Jesse's up to, now. "They said to bring it to the old water wheel on Mill Pond Way. Something about putting it into a suitcase and jamming it between two blades of the wheel – I don't know." Of course she doesn't. Most likely she didn't grow up playing in and around the ruins of the old gristmill, but Daisy did. A diary, little red thing, she used to hide in that wheel, but it has the capacity to take something much bigger. The only people who might ever know it was there would be the one who hid it and the one who ordered it hidden there. And any of the county's children who still play there—oh, no. They can't possibly let this exchange happen, not in a place where innocent kids could get hurt.

"Uncle Jesse," she says, but he waves a hand at her. _Not now, girl._ She doesn't much care for being shushed, but even if she doesn't say it out loud, her mind echoes with a _yes, sir_, and she bites her tongue.

"At two o'clock tomorrow." That's when Lulu's drop is supposed to take place, apparently. "Where am I going to get a quarter of a million dollars by then?"

Foolish or clever, either way, Hickman has kidnapped the one man who is actually resourceful enough to dig up that kind of money – were he free to do so.

"Tomorrow," Jesse says, pulling that grizzled lower lip into his mouth. "So we got a day," a little less actually, but that only matters if the Claridge County Boss is watching the clock, and Daisy would bet he's as lazy about such things as most folks around Hazzard. _Half past a freckle,_ Aunt Lavinia used to say with a giggle if someone was fool enough to ask her the time. Heck, the Duke kids were raised to recognize sunrise, noon and sundown as meal times (for themselves and the livestock, both), to work diligently and not worry about the exact hour for the rest of the day. Luke surprised them all by coming back from the Marines with a split-second sense of time, which means that when they bring this information back to him, he'll be the one to get nit-picky about how long they really have left. "To find them first."

"No, Jesse," gets shrieked, "please. He said not to try to find them or he'd, he'd—" She can't repeat whatever the words are that got used on her, but by drawing her forefinger across her neck, Miss Lulu makes her meaning clear. Unless she follows the rules, Boss Hogg will come to an untimely end.

"Now, Lulu," her uncle consoles, taking one step closer and patting her hand. Kindly little gesture, but he's just as ready as he ever was to bolt out the door and leave the comforting to Daisy. "Don't you worry. They'll only hurt J.D. if they _know _we're out there looking for them." Which means they have to be stealthy and careful.

Daisy pats Lulu's shoulder and promises to come back to see her real soon, but right now they've got to go. She reckons it would be a very good thing if she and her uncle hustled back to tell Luke what they've learned.

* * *

_I'll keep you posted._ The echo of Bo's words in his head comes out nasal, mocking. Like one immature brat mimicking another, and he reckons that's the refrain of his childhood. Two heads turned toward each other, one blonde, one brunette, identical tongues out, and if they were particularly brave (or maybe just wanted their breeches warmed) there'd even be a raspberry to follow. Can't say it's changed a lot now that their legs are long enough to kick each other's shins under the table.

Bo must've grown up some, just a bit and when Luke wasn't looking. That cute little speech about wanting him to stay safe – that's nothing Bo Duke has ever thought to say before. Untouchable, made of steel, superpowers or something, Luke's health and well-being have generally been somewhat skewed in his baby cousin's estimation. Until today, when he nodded his pretty blonde head over the notion that it would be wisest if his oldest cousin and sometime guardian angel stayed behind while he went out in search of kidnappers alone. All right, so Bo's not entirely without backup should he run into trouble; Cooter and that pair of dipsticks dressed in blue are there if needed, but they won't know whether he's in trouble or not if the fool doesn't check in. Too quiet, too quiet, and even if it hasn't been long enough to justify worrying, Luke's going to anyway. Because it's his impetuous cousin that's out there.

Listening to sounds that aren't there appears to be his new hobby, but he doesn't like it, gets to thinking on how little he likes it and somewhere about the time that all of his brain power is going into not liking it, there's an engine outside. Wrong car, not the fierce growl of the General or the gentle hum of Daisy's Plymouth. No, it's the clank and rattle of a wrecker, followed, seconds later by the slapping of the back door to this place, and then there's that wild grin. Cooter, the sometime halfwit, half time brilliant mechanic, and that man never did halfway learn how to tell time, but even if he could, he doesn't own a watch.

"Hey, Lukas." Chipper, cheerful, showing no signs of recognizing that he's fifteen minutes early in getting back here, or that the whole bunch of them are forty-five minutes late with their promised checking in. Acts like he doesn't realize how danged strenuous it's been for Luke to hold himself back from putting out an all-call over the CB. "How's it hanging?"

He smirks at the funny guy, skips over the pleasantries. "You seen Bo out there?" Because everyone else went off in pairs, and he reckons they're fine. Jesse and Daisy got sent on a safe mission anyway, and Rosco and Enos have got to be surrounded by some sort of a magic force-field that makes it impossible for them to detect, or even stumble onto, real criminals. They'll be fine.

"Nope." Casual, relaxed, like the question was about whether he expects rain. Man hops himself up on the Deacon's old, ailing Ford there in the middle of his garage, stretches out across the hood with obvious intentions of taking himself a nap. "Didn't see nothing else, neither. Except trees and grass and dirt. Went past Hazzard Pond, so I saw water, too. But no strangers."

"You didn't stay out there for a whole hour, neither," Luke informs him.

"Weren't no point. Ain't nothing to see. Quit worrying so much. Whatever they're up to, they're laying low for now. They ain't messing with Bo none." Yawn follows the words, and that does it.

"Cooter," he snaps. "Get up."

He doesn't heed the order, but those slightly bugged, blue eyes roll over to fasten on him. The look is some kind of a cross between _what?_ and _I'm listening_.

"Since you got back early, you just volunteered for the next assignment." Which Luke has only just now made up, but never mind that. He might have spent the last two days with only himself for company, he might be halfway crazy from being stuck in here while everyone else is out and about. But he hardly wants to be around a man that's so laid-back as to almost be asleep. Not when there's work to be done, people to be captured, locked up, sent away. Dang it all, he wants a shower, a good meal, his own bed with Bo snoring not four feet away, and what stands between him and all of that is some kind of a crazy scheme of Claridge County's to take over Hazzard. Meanwhile Cooter would as soon sleep in a puddle of grease or the lumpy hood of a half-dead car instead of helping.

"What?" comes out as a lazy drawl to match the slothful sprawl.

"Get over to the courthouse and find out whether any of Hickman's men have come back yet. See if they've noticed that Bo and Rosco ain't there, and whether they're looking for them, too."

When it comes right down to it, Luke knows the Claridge men aren't really hunting for him – his escape, him being at large, is what gives them a right to occupy this county. He could probably stroll right out there into the middle of Hazzard Square and be safe (mostly. There'd be a certain amount of risk if he went thumbing his nose at Hickman and making plain that the manhunt was nothing more than a ruse) but Bo and Rosco – they could be genuinely wanted men right now. And if that's the case, he and his cousin need to switch places whenever the brat manages to get himself back here.

"All right, all right," Cooter answers, peeling himself off the steel of his temporary bed. "I'm going." Up onto his feet, shaking his head and offering that gap-toothed, fool's grin of his. "You need to lighten up, Lukas."

Easy for him to say. A smirk and a wave from the Duke boy, and the mechanic accepts that as some kind of silent apology. For being on edge, for surliness, for growing up and becoming responsible. Seems that's all Cooter needs to motivate him to get on his way.


	11. Not Done Having Fun Yet

**_Author's Note: _**_Sorry about that. For a week there, work ate my life. Believe me, Cooter's angrier at me than anyone else about this; he's been just dying to show y'all how clever he is._

_Thanks for sticking with me through another one, even if I am off my schedule._

**

* * *

**

**Chapter Eleven – Not Done Having Fun Yet**

Begats, fruitful multiplications, generations listed in family bibles. Each family has its own, and where they stumble into each other, one clan coming smack up against another, there's fussing and fighting. Over who can lay claim to the ancestor in question, and sometimes who might just as soon disown them. And when the dust settles and peace resumes, the definition of "kin" simply expands to include people who were thought of only as "neighbors" yesterday. Which just makes it good policy to treat everyone in the region like family.

Sad, those left with no kin on this earth. Like Emma Tisdale, who gets quietly tutted over in the bakery and the dressmaker's. Back and forth discussions about whose fault it is that her rules and regulations drove away every man who might have considered her, that she buried her nose in the mail and never properly primped or preened. If she has no family now that her sister is gone, it might just be that she loves her work more than any human being anyway.

Similar sorrows might be assigned to Miss Minnie. Might, but then memory serves a mutterer or two. Cousins, she had a few spread around the neighboring counties. Cousins who had kids that scattered to the winds like dried out dandelion seeds. All except one, who settled in Claridge. Jacob or Jake or Jack (there are skirmishes over the boy's first name) who never was all that impressive to begin with. Pudgy and whiny until that growth spurt that made him big. Hard-looking face, but underneath he's still that fumbling little boy. Flat footed in his standard-issue boots, blue shirt too tight across his chest. Tough attitude to fool the world into believing he's a strong and sturdy deputy, when below it all those eyes still flicker back and forth, searching for acceptance. Love, maybe. Belonging. Always one good bust away from impressing his peers.

And if it makes him a touch volatile, a mite unpredictable, somewhat strange, and puts people on edge, well, the ladies at the hairstylist and in line at the bread counter agree. It runs in the family – just look at old Miss Minnie.

* * *

It's a shame, really, what happened to Luke. Oh, not the moonshining bust in Sweetwater nor the confinement in Claridge County, though that part's not particularly good, either. No, the shame part is how Luke's forgotten how to have fun.

It's been a lifetime of forgetting, really. There's instinct in there, and a belly laugh to prove it. Crazy planning mind that sometimes comes up with the wildest of ideas, and he reckons that's Luke's fun side trying to push its way out from behind all that responsibility the guy keeps holding up like a shield. Not that he ever talks about it or admits to anything, but if Luke were going to explain his motives they would all come down to protecting what little family he has left. Which is just foolishness – each and every one of the Dukes is perfectly capable of taking care of him or herself. Silly, silly, the way he's in there all but twitching about Bo, when that boy can outdrive anyone in three counties (at least) and outfight most of them if he ever did find himself without wheels. He's fine, just fine, but Luke won't bother with believing that until he can see it with his own eyes.

Sometimes lucky days happen too, the kind where the sun shines just right and the birds sing in perfect harmony. Where all the cars are cherry-red mustangs with revving engines firing on all eight. And when the stars are aligned and the boy forgets his military training, Luke comes out to play. On those rare occasions the wild stunts mount, one on top of the other until they're ready to topple, and those Duke boys – both of them – grin like gleeful fools. On those days there's nowhere better to be than by Luke Duke's side.

But today is not one of those days, and now that he's out of old doom-and-gloom's sight, it's just about time that Cooter had himself some fun. Sauntering, swaying, whistling tunelessly and acting every bit the drunken country idiot, he weaves his way into the County Building. Giggles when he sees that giant ape, Rollo, standing there looking put out. If it's a nervous sound, the mechanic's the only one who knows that; the Claridge County Boss's lackey and the other two, more lowly men, reckon he's just a half-crazed hick.

"Rosco," he sings out, as if he's engaged the sheriff in a game of hide-and-seek. "Where are you Rosco?" Deliberately walks around the Claridge lawmen, ignoring the glares he's getting for his troubles, lets them sputter about _what does that moron think he's doing_ as he makes his way around the squad room. Snickering low enough that he reckons he won't be heard, he looks under the sheriff's desk then Enos', no luck. Up to the jail cell in the corner, and even though it's obviously empty, he swings the door wide and calls for Rosco.

"What are you doing?" Rollo finally gets around to directly asking him. He turns then, meets the man's eyes and grins widely.

"Why, I'm just looking for Sheriff Coltrane. You seen him?" There's a quiet smolder in the bigger man's eyes, and Cooter's learned all he needs to. Not only have Hickman's men obviously discovered the absence of Rosco and Bo, but they aren't too pleased about it. If he was a responsible man, if he was going to play by the exact orders of one Luke Duke, he'd get out of here now.

"He ain't here," is all Rollo says.

"Well now, that there is a shame." Surely it is. Rosco's not here and Cooter's not done having fun yet. "Say, did he happen to tell you when he'd be back?"

Dark, glowering fury, and even the Claridge deputies are keeping away from this particular corner of the squad room. "Ain't you heard?" Rollo says, flipping his anger over into full out menace. Simple trick, and this big old boy isn't even very good at it. "Coltrane ain't the Sheriff in these parts no more. This here county is under Claridge law." _So mosey on out of here before you get yourself subjected to that law_. The words don't get said, but then they don't have to. It's all right there in the stance of that oversized body.

"Well that there is just a double shame, then." Probably ought to have heeded that unspoken advice. Then again, Cooter Davenport never has been one to tolerate being pushed around. "Because he owes me forty-six dollars and thirty-seven cents. See, I done replaced the door on his squad car, after he done left the old one in the woods last Tuesday. Dangedest thing, how that man always forgets to close his doors when he's in hot pursuit." He shakes his head mournfully over the ongoing loss of cruiser doors. Poor things don't stand a chance where the Hazzard County Sheriff's Department is concerned. "Anyways, if you're the new law, then you're the one I need to see." He takes himself a moment to get a good look at all three men in the room. Rollo's the only one he knows by name, and he draws a complete blank when he looks into the face of one of the others. But that third one – tall, with a sneer pasted across his face that belies his nervousness (and yes, his hand is wavering a touch too close to the butt of his gun for Cooter's comfort) – there's a familiarity there. The ghost of someone else in that face. "That'll be forty-six dollars and thirty-seven cents." He holds his hand out in anticipation.

He might just get shot. If he does, it'll likely be worth it just for that bug-eyed look that's on Rollo's face now. Still, it would be preferable to make it back to the garage in one piece so he can share what he's learned here.

"Well," he says, withdrawing his hand. "If you see Rosco, you can tell him he owes me, then." Another disarming grin, as he's backing toward the door. "See you later alligator," and he's gone. Making haste toward the garage where he can't wait to tell that old sourpuss, Luke, about the fun he missed out on.

* * *

"Well," Luke's saying, pulling his lower lip in between his teeth. Doesn't get time to nibble on it, though, he's already talking again. "They done picked a good place. Very smart." Congratulating their adversaries on their choice of a drop off point for the money. "Out in the open. No trees, no buildings just flat field and creek. No place to hide out there, nothing but that water wheel."

"And ain't none of us small enough to fit in there anymore." That's Daisy, perched on the hood of the Deacon's car. Everyone's here, finally, now that his uncle and cousin have arrived. Seems like they had to stay at Boss' place a few minutes longer than Luke's allotted hour, what with Lulu needing comforting and all.

The old water wheel, and once upon a time they were small enough to slip between the spokes and get inside. Or he and Daisy were, anyway; he mostly remembers Luke staying on the outside, providing the muscle to get the thing spinning. Long ago there was a mill there, and the stream had been dammed into something more like a pond. But by the time the Duke kids got old enough to wander out that way, the building was so long gone that even its foundation was nothing more than crumbled concrete. And the rock dam that once retained the water had been picked apart, leaving the wheel high and, unless they'd had a particularly rainy spring, dry. No water to turn the wheel, so they used Luke-power instead, giving Bo and Daisy the most sickening rides of their lives. More than once, it seems to his memory, he came stumbling back out of the wheel only to find that he'd lost his sense of up and down. Suddenly the dirt would come up to meet him, and Luke would laugh. Always made Bo giggle, the way his oldest cousin got more pleasure out of watching him and Daisy reel than taking a spin himself.

"There's that old bridge," Bo offers, but—

"It ain't high enough," Luke points out, and he's got a point. It's nothing more than a few planks that span the creek.

Rosco's twitching, probably getting ready to come out with an ijit, or, if he's truly frustrated, a full-out gijit. But the sheriff should know by now. There's no hurrying Luke, not when he's chewing over information and formulating a plan.

"Seems to me it would behoove us to find them before pay off time, anyways," Cooter ventures.

"Agreed." Luke's got the corner of that lip in his mouth again. His eyes come up from where they've been staring off into nothingness, startling blue meeting Bo's before moving on to look at each of the others in the garage. "Y'all know where they ain't."

Which is, based upon the assembled reports from everyone in the room: the old mining shacks on Hatchapee Road, the Okamauga Caves, the northern boundary of the Uchee swamp, the abandoned railroad station, the stone cottage on Route 36 – when it comes right down to it, they've only eliminated the tiniest fraction of potential hiding places in Hazzard County.

"So we got to get back out there and keep looking," Bo says, and if he appears eager for action, it's only because he is. Plans that involve just him and Luke always seem to go at double this speed. Sitting and meeting and exchanging information – it's just plain boring.

Luke's nodding, and maybe it's because he agrees with Bo's suggestion or, more likely, because he knows his younger cousin's getting impatient. "But not Daisy. Girl, ain't you got to work?"

Daisy starts to protest, something about how saving Boss is more important than some silly waitressing job anyway, but one thoughtful look from Luke and the sputtering stops. "I reckon I could trade off some beers for some information," she says. Back to the job she already ran out on once this afternoon, but it's not like Boss is in any position to fire her for it anyway. And as to her co-workers, a simple smile from her and any transgressions will be immediately forgotten.

More twitching from Rosco, probably with some intention of making sure that not a drop of his little fat buddy's beer gets given away for free, even if it is in the name of saving the marshmallow himself. But, "Come on, Sheriff," Enos encourages, catching a drift of where Luke's going with this. "We'd best get back out there and keep looking."

"Keep looking?" Rosco explodes, but this little outburst doesn't mean anything. It's simply a necessary step before the man can commit to doing anything at all. "Enos, you dipstick," again, just words that need to be said. No offense meant, and the deputy doesn't take any. "Where are we going to look? We could go all day and never find nothing. There's just too many places they could be."

"Oh now, Rosco." Jesse's impatient with the same old routine, and his tone shows it. "You ain't never gonna find nobody if you sit here talking like that. You just gotta," voice high, hand pushing through air to make his point, "keep looking until you find something."

"I been thinking," Luke says, but scheming is more like it. There's that extra little glow there in the blue of his eyes, and even if no one else in the room recognizes the look for what it is, Bo knows. "From what Cooter says, it might be best if Rosco stayed here. Bo, too. Sounds like them Claridge County boys are madder about them breaking out than they are about me."

Oh, so that's the game. Luke reckons his life will improve if he can get Bo grounded instead of himself. Well, it won't work – he may be the youngest of the clan, but Bo is hardly passive, and there's no way he's letting this go down without a fight.

Except that Jesse puts a stop to it before Bo even has to.

"Now, Luke," the old man says, finger pointing right at his cousin's chest. _You just listen to me, boy_. "We ain't sure how many men they done brought into the county, nor whether they actually been communicating with all them men. Only thing we know for sure is they came in with orders to find you." And, most likely, to shoot first and ask questions later.

"Yeah, but Jesse," and only Luke would answer back like that. That tongue of his is what got him taken out to the barn so often, dragged by his upper arm while Jesse's face grew redder by the second. "If they catch me, they ain't got no reason to stay in Hazzard no more. And that would ruin Hickman's whole plan of taking over the county."

"If that's really the plan," Jesse reminds him, advancing a step or two with that finger just leading the way. "And if all them boys out there with guns are in on the plan, or even care about it." Luke's hands are on his hips, his chin jutted in the air. This here could turn into a real showdown. "What you're gambling with there, Luke, is your life. You're betting that them guns, them orders them boys got, is a ruse. And maybe it is." But the high pitched wheedle in Jesse's voice indicates that he's got his doubts. "But if you're wrong, they're gonna kill you. And I won't have it."

Luke's head drops, and he exhales more air than Bo would have guessed his lungs could hold.

"All right," he gives in. "But y'all be careful out there." Right hand up, index finger pointing at Bo and pinky jutting toward Rosco. "Especially you two."


	12. Men, Boys, Fools and Flies

**Chapter Twelve – Men, Boys, Fools and Flies**

White truck, heading east. Yellow coupe, skidding to a stop at the Boar's Nest. Orange racer, winding up onto the old Badger Crossing Trail. And in that last, just one bobbing head, yellow. Three Dukes in plain sight but the invasion of lawmen from Claridge County is all about the fourth. Luke Duke, slipperier than a sidewinder.

There are those who reckon he's already halfway to Carolina, and others who figure he's right here in town, hiding in plain sight and laughing at the whole system that's trying to contain him. And then there's that growing contingent that suggests he's locked up tight in the Claridge County jail, and all those men out there with weapons at the ready know exactly where their "escaped prisoner" is. Those guns, most likely, aren't loaded for that Duke boy, but for Hazzard's citizens in general. This here is just a thinly disguised takeover of their land by a hostile invader.

Militia, rebel troops, these ideas for resistance get mentioned. But it's late afternoon on a steaming hot day, and perhaps these are thoughts best slept on anyway. A nap now, a night of planning, and if anyone's still up for it tomorrow, a counter-attack can be launched.

* * *

Men, boys, fools. Her thoughts got interrupted from pondering that particular point while she sat in a rich man's house and comforted his sobbing wife. She ought to know the nature of the opposite sex, what with how she lives with three textbook examples. Always galloping around the house like goats come rutting time, knocking their heads against each other, dirtying her floors, smudging her walls, and otherwise forgetting that they ever knew any manners at all.

It's a good thing that she loves them as much as she does: Luke for his smotheringly protective ways, Bo for his sunshine smile and ability to turn the most dreadful day into gleeful fun, and Jesse for – well, for obvious reasons. That love that she feels for each of them is what keeps them clothed, decently fed, halfway clean. Without her, they most likely _would_ be indistinguishable from the goats in the farmyard.

And they'd never know a danged thing worth knowing that wasn't as plain as the nose on Boss's face (which is a truly plain thing). Subtlety, men haven't got the first idea what it means, much less how to make good use of it.

"You ready for another, sugar?" Not that she's getting any information at this table, dominated as it is by old Sunshine. Rough as sandpaper, old as that giant oak tree that stands in front of the Methodist Church, seen more than a bug-eyed owl over the course of his lifetime, and Sunshine is just plain holding court here to share his theories about the motives of Claridge's Boss Hickman. Getting most of his facts from the bottom of a mason jar as far as Daisy can tell; each sip makes him smarter, more sure. She's hoping he'll drink himself under the table, because for all the noise of what he mistakes for whispers, she can't hear any other conversations. "Y'all got to order or move on. I can't have you taking up tables and keeping paying customers away." Not that there are any paying customers clamoring for this spot; the bar's half empty. Just seems like Sunshine and company are a detriment to her learning anything useful.

"Daisy-girl," he starts, craning his neck up to see her better. Hair white as snow, and yet his beard's still mostly dark. Strange reversal from the way most men age, but then Sunshine's never been the average man. Not with enough whiskey in him to flatten a younger, healthier man, and still raring for more.

"He's ready for another," Chip Harrison contributes authoritatively from the other side of the table.

"You too?" Daisy asks, polling the table for drink orders.

"Bring me a beer, honey," Dave Osterling says, the only sane drinker and halfway sober man in the group. Everyone else is up for more whiskey.

"Where's your uncle?" Sunshine finally gets around to finishing his question. Drops of water or whiskey in his beard, and his eyes look tired. Maybe lonely, even if he has four other men here letting him unwind his thoughts and theories on them.

"It ain't Tuesday night, honey," is how she chooses to avoid the question. Because on Tuesday Jesse and Sunshine, old friends and sometime partners, sit down to a game of checkers or three. Sometimes five, if Jesse rheumatism's being agreeable and Sunshine's sticking to drinking more water than whiskey. "He'll be along next Tuesday. Be right back," she promises with a smile. After all, there's a better chance of catching flies with honey than there is with vinegar. It's just that these particular flies – well, she's got no real use for them.

Frustration must show on her face when she gets behind the bar with her order, because, "They behaving themselves, honey?" Jerry asks.

"Oh, they're behaving just the same as they always do." It may not exactly be an answer, but Jerry understands it all the same, offers up that same loose smile he's been giving her since that first day she took the job. It commiserates with the heavy hassle and light tips that are the hallmark of day-to-day life here. _You and me against the world_ is in that grin, so she returns it, even if she might rather grumble. "You might as well go on out back and get a few more bottles of whiskey. Don't think that group's going anywhere until after dark." About her only hope is that they'll fall asleep right there at the table.

Tray balanced on her right hand, she puts on her brightest smile and heads back to the group. Sunshine, at least, is as generous a tipper as a part-time moonshiner with a sideline in gambling can be.

And they're all perfectly sweet about taking their jars and glasses and otherwise keeping their hands to themselves, so Daisy thanks them for their patronage and wanders off to see whether there are any more useful flies she could be using her honey on.

She's at table two, dropping off the hamburger with extra pickle and ribs with a side of fries to the relatively quiet couple sitting there when Enos walks in. If ever there was an obstacle to her honey pulling the buzz out of the right fly, it's a roving man in blue.

"Hi, Enos honey," she calls across the room as she swipes the catsup off table three to put it in front of the two patrons she has just delivered orders to. "If y'all need anything else, just holler," she mutters to them, but the food in front of them has more of their attention that she does. Back across the room with a smile on her face.

Makes a point to go back behind the bar and run some water over her tray, then freshen up the pretzels at the far end before she makes her way over to the deputy.

"Enos," she hisses, but her smile – and this is critical, because if flies detect even the slightest bit of vinegar in their honey, they won't come within catching range – never wavers. "What are you doing here?" And, more importantly, "Where's Rosco?"

Nervous little twitch, apologetic eyes, and – just _men_. Clomping around like bulls, pretending they don't have the first idea that they're in a china shop, even if they _are_ surrounded by the most obviously delicate and fragile objects.

"The sheriff ain't with me, Daisy." That right there is a mercy. Small one, because Enos is already putting ripples into this pond that Daisy has worked so hard to keep smooth as glass. But Rosco, well that man could make a tidal wave wash over the whole bar, and she'd be mopping up for days. "He done said I was a dipstick driver." Well that's nothing that hasn't already happened every day this week. "And he wanted his own car. I told him Luke wouldn't like it, but," Rosco undoubtedly had a few choice things to say (somewhere in between his various jits and gyus) about how he didn't need to be listening to a Duke anyway, he was the sheriff around these parts and furthermore—"he insisted. He's down in Skunk Hollow, last he checked in." Checked in? Checked in and it only now occurs to her that she hasn't heard any CB chatter at all. Jerry must've turned off the monitor again. For a bartender who overhears all manner of babblings, day and night, he gets oddly irked by the prattle of a CB radio.

"What else is going on out there?" she asks, forgetting about flies and honey and _men_ for a second. "What can I get you sugar?" That part gets said a little louder, much more invitingly, hopefully convincingly, as she leads him closer to the bar.

"Uh, just water." Confused, befuddled – cute how those raised eyebrows create a whole series a parallel wrinkles running the width of his forehead. She turns that line of thinking off; one of them has to stay clear-headed. "Thank you, Daisy."

She sits him down with the glass of ice water in front of him. The man's got three minutes to state his business, drink his fill, and get back out on the road. She sets her resolve on that.

"What else," she whispers, smiling over his shoulder at the table in the back where Jasper and Dallas Waters are paying her no mind whatsoever, "is going on out there?"

Enos shakes his head, looks her in the eyes for a second before shyness gets the better of him. Focuses, then, on the hat he's laid on the bar between them. "Nothing." She nudges the glass of water closer to him, half in apology for her abruptness and half to hurry him along. He sips at it, then, "Just figuring out where they ain't," he mutters back to her.

She nods, takes a couple of steps down the bar. Fills a glass with seltzer to ease the burning in her stomach that hasn't stopped since she first ran out of here during the lunch rush, then reaches over to turn on the CB scanner. Stares Jerry down when he turns her way, gets a sheepish shrug in response. She lowers the volume and a silent truce gets called between them.

By the time she gets back to Enos, he's swallowed most of the water. Good boy. "I just came to check on you," comes out like an apology, has her making a mental note to make it up to him later.

"That's sweet, Enos honey," is how she handles him for now. Sounds like something she's said every day of her life, gets the same blushing response it's always gotten before. "I'm just fine." And she is. Fine and frustrated. Fly-catching on a flyless afternoon.

"Right, well," and his nervous eyes come up to meet hers again. "Luke sent me to find out if you learned anything." Back to looking at the glass of water in front of him, then, like he's trying to keep himself from blurting anything more, the deputy drinks the last of it down.

Dang Jerry. No, dang her. For not noticing the silenced CB scanner until now, for not deciding to check in on her own, for being snappish with Enos when he was sent here in the first place. She sighs, and if her smile falters she reckons the flies weren't exactly flocking to her anyway.

"Ain't nobody saying nothing useful. Just them," and she lets her eyes do the pointing instead of her finger, over toward old Sunshine's group, "trying to figure out what Boss Hickman's up to. And them," over toward Jasper and Dallas, "saying something about Miss Minnie having a nephew or a cousin or something from over there in Claridge." At least, she reckons, if she had to go forgetting to check in, it's for the best that she had nothing of importance to report.

Enos is tripping over the stool, his feet, and the floor, in his sudden urge to get closer to the door.

"Enos, honey," she says, but stops short of calling him back. Funny how all she's been wanting is for him to get out of the bar, but now that he's going, she's got the unaccountable urge to grab him by the forearm and keep him right here.

"I'm sorry, Daisy, I got to go." Wide, eager eyes, and the deputy is onto something. Backing toward the door, and this is a man who can't hardly walk straight when he's going forward.

"Is it something I said?" It manages to come out sounding approximately like a joke. At least she hopes that's the way the rest of the bar takes her words, though the question is entirely real.

"I got to go see Rosco," is all she gets for an answer, and then he's gone.

Leaving her to catch whatever flies there might be in this place. Unless, of course, without realizing it, she's already caught one.

* * *

Dust and grease. Not a whole lot better than the bars and concrete he left behind. He's itching, aching, to be outside where the air is fresh. The angle of the afternoon sun leaves a yellow stripe across the floor, marking time for him. Days and hours lost to being still, and he finds himself drumming his fingers to a beat he doesn't know he's hearing. Singing starts soon after that, and he reckons he's just as crazy now as he was in that silent jail in the next county to the north.

Somewhere around the time he's got himself a little band going, between his tapping toes, his fingernails clanking on the hood of the Deacon's car and his mouth singing any fool words that want to come into it, Bo strolls in. Starts singing in nonsense harmony right back at him, fingers picking at the strings of a guitar that isn't really there. Grins back at Luke's soulful rendition of nothing in particular, turns it into something closer to a nursery rhyme with a jaunty beat. Takes Luke's minor key and throws in a few accidentals until it's major. Dissolves into giggles, and makes Luke laugh right back at him.

"What's going on out there?" It's important to remember that there are bigger things than the spontaneous formation of a garage band to be considered. So even if Bo is still giggling at their foolishness, it's a question that has to be asked. All the same, it's a shame to watch that loose grin tighten down into frustration. Eyebrows meeting in the middle, sulky little frown.

"Nothing. I been looking in dusty old cabins and half collapsed barns all afternoon, and about the only thing I found was a mess of spiders, some rats, and a splinter." Right palm up to show Luke the evidence, but the garage is too dark or Bo's too far away, so Luke pulls himself up onto the hood of the Deacon's Ford and holds his hand out. Waits for his kid cousin to do that same complex math – of exactly how much his hand hurts now versus how painful it's going to be once he lets Luke poke at the splinter, and whether removal or infection is the worst case scenario – that he's always done. Finally shuffles a few steps forward and surrenders his hand for the scrutiny.

"That's a beauty," Luke congratulates. Big sucker, and he'd lay odds that Bo's the one who worked it so deep.

"Thanks," gets mumbled back at him.

"Go wash up," he instructs, and that blonde head drops with the knowledge that there's not going to be a reprieve; that splinter's got to come out. Over to the mechanic's sink, which is hardly a germ-free environment, but it'll have to do. Meanwhile, Luke pulls out his knife and finds himself a match in Cooter's desk to sterilize it with.

"How's things going here?" Bo calls across to him, eyes widening as he watches Luke run the blade through the flame. Funny how the boy always worries about the wrong things. Of course there's no way Luke's going to touch any part of the knife to his cousin until it cools down. If he had himself some moonshine, he'd make everything real sterile with it. Including Bo's brain, most likely. A drop for the knife, a sip for Bo until both were ready for this little operation. But this is Cooter's garage, not Jesse's living room, where pulling the right book off the shelf will reveal a mason jar of moonshine. (For medicinal purposes, of course.) This little flame here is just going to have to do.

"Well, 'bout a half hour ago, Rosco and Enos showed up. They was so worked up that I figured they had to've found something." A smirk, a shaken head for the ear-splitting bravado of one Rosco Coltrane on a tear. "Turned out Rosco reckoned riding with Enos was what was keeping him from finding anything. Came back here begging to get out of Enos' cruiser and into his own." Knife's as disinfected as it's going to get. Might as well get on with the surgery, which is why he snuffs the match and hops himself up onto the Ford again. "I said, 'You ain't got to get my permission, Rosco. You're the sheriff.' Made him spit and sputter something fierce. Get over here, Bo." Because left to himself, the blonde would stand over there washing his hands all day. As if he's ever been that careful about cleanliness. Heck, he's come in filthy from mucking stalls and not taken as much time to wash up for dinner as he's doing now. "I ain't gonna hurt you."

Wounded pride, works like a charm. Here comes the courageous boy to prove he's not afraid of a little pain. Brave face, but the hand that gets placed in his is tentative, a flight risk. He reckons it'd be best to start distracting Bo right now.

"You been up to the Pine Ridge yet?" It'd make a reasonable hideout, with all those hunting cabins that hardly get used anymore.

"First place I went," Bo answers back, watching closely as the blunt side of the knife's blade touches against the deepest part of the splinter. Waits so hard for the pain to come that he starts to pull back, even before Luke applies any pressure.

"Eyes here, Bo," he says, grabbing a little more firmly onto that hand. Blue eyes, trying their dangedest to be trusting, meet his. "Nothing there, huh? How about Crater Lake?" Which isn't a great spot, necessarily, but he and Bo have hidden out in the thick trees there once or twice.

"No sign of them there," Bo answers, wincing slightly when a little bit of pressure gets applied against the low edge of the splinter. Luke has to look down to see if he's made any progress; not really. When he looks back up, Bo's eyes are waiting for him there. Good boy. It's the watching that always does him in.

"How about the old Kimball Stables?" Nudges a little more at the splinter, but it doesn't want to work loose easy.

"Only one I ran into there was Jesse," Bo informs him, and Luke looks up in time to catch a smirk. "Hollering at me to go find my own corner of the county to go looking in." Luke smiles back at him, turns the knife over in his hand. Has to go back to looking down for this next part.

"The way I see it," Luke says as he goes searching for the tiny hole through which the offending splinter entered that pink palm in the first place. "We ain't going to find them. We got to get them to find us." There it is. Already a little bit stretched out and Luke would bet that's from Bo picking at it on the whole ride back here. He looks back up to be greeted by Bo's annoyed face. Frustrated, scrunched, and under that, a little bit tired. Luke can sympathize.

"How you reckon to do that?" And grumpy, too, which is another emotion that they share.

"Well," he starts, his eyes returning to the task at hand. "I was thinking," which is likely to get Bo's eyes to rolling, but that's all right. This right here is the part he doesn't want his cousin watching. Quick little movement to get the tip of his knife into that opening, followed by a little tug. Doesn't take much – after all that washing, Bo's skin is soft, and it's just the top layer anyway. Won't even bleed. "What if they saw me?"

"What?" gets shouted in his ear, and it's a good thing he's got a steady hand or he might just have cut out more than the splinter. But since the operation was wholly successful, he holds the knife up where Bo can see the little sliver of wood poised on the blade. Usually that part gets him a wide smile and a _thanks, cuz_, and when Bo was about two feet shorter than he is now, it would have earned him a hug, too. But today that face doesn't relax, doesn't get any less red or scrunched together than it was a second ago. "What are you talking about, Luke Duke?"

Wow, must be serious. Has Bo using both his names, sounding just like a certain scolding old man that they both know and love. "Go wash up again," he nudges. Because if they're going to get into a fistfight and start rolling around on this dirty floor, he reckons he wants to put a band aid on Bo's palm first. "Go on."

A huff of breath, and the glare never leaves Bo's eyes, but he's going to comply. Which is good, it gives Luke a minute to hunt through Cooter's drawers for that half-decrepit first aid kit. By the time he's got it, Bo's done with the washing and has marched himself over to stand close. And tall, and looking down at Luke like he can intimidate him that way.

"Bo," he says as he tears the paper away from the bandage underneath. "The way I figure it, the last thing they want to do is catch me." Or shoot him, either, but there's no point in putting that image into his suddenly protective cousin's head. "At least not in public. And they don't want me running around out there where everyone can see me, neither." Band aid's been applied, so he looks up into his cousin's eyes. Which still haven't come out of their narrowed state. "If Hazzard folk saw me get captured or saw me out there at all, they'd start squawking about this here takeover. They don't want no one seeing me until after they're done shaking down Lulu."

"No way, Luke," is Bo's answer, before he's even heard the whole pitch. And in a minute he's liable to fall back on _Uncle Jesse said for you to stay here_, just like he would have when wasn't neither of them old enough to have discovered girls yet. As if his cousin has always obeyed the old man. "You ain't going out there."

"They can't do nothing to me in public, Bo. But maybe I can spook them out of wherever they are."

"Yeah, and that logic works just fine if they bother to think before they shoot." Seems like he didn't have to remind Bo about the artillery; the boy remembered it all on his own. Still, he doesn't reckon any of those men out there really want him dead, or even hurt. They're just putting on a little show for the benefit Hazzard County's residents and waiting on Boss Hickman to pay them for their acting talents.

"No, listen," he argues, putting one hand on Bo's shoulder. Which is still up higher than usual as his cousin tries to loom over him, but touch, like it always has, settles him down just a little bit. "Cooter said that Rollo was over there at the Courthouse. If I go out there—" and that blonde head's shaking already, so he squeezes the shoulder in his grip, "just into the street, Bo, I ain't got to go inside the Courthouse. Just out into the street and if I get Rollo's attention," plus that of any passers by, "and then I disappear, well, he'd have to go to Hickman. Or make Hickman come here, because he ain't going to know what to do on his own. And either way, we can capture Hickman," oh he doesn't have the first idea how they'll do that, but the details will take care of themselves later. They always do. "And trade him for Boss."

"No way, Luke." The protest is still there, but it's wavering just a little bit.

"Come on, Bo. I need your help to do it." It's cheating to say that, really, but it's also true. Bo never has been able to resist getting involved when Luke admits to needing his help.

For the second time in a few minutes, that blonde head drops with the knowledge that there's no way to get out of an unpleasant task. He's going to give in.


	13. Mayday

**Chapter Thirteen – Mayday**

Young love, full to brimming with dreams of romance. Even oldsters have to pause in their morbid expectation of imminent doom to marvel at the beauty of a couple of kids, testing out their dating legs.

Which, the drunken mumblers mostly agree, Daisy Duke and Enos Strate aren't. Kids or testing out dating legs – they're both old enough to know what they are doing. If only they'd get around to doing it.

Maybe the whisperers are tired of trying to figure out what Claridge wants with Hazzard, and whether they ought to be heading into the hills to protect their lives or livelihoods. Could be they just want a happy interlude between the delivery of this bit of bad news and that. Whatever the reason, for a quarter of an hour, murmurs of Luke Duke subside in favor discussing the prospects of his younger and vastly more beautiful cousin, Daisy.

* * *

He's an idiot, but Luke's a jackass. And that, right there, might be the excuse he winds up offering his uncle when he has to explain how his older cousin went and got himself killed.

_I need your help, Bo_. Reasonable request on the surface, but upon digging deeper, what he's been asked to do is no more than aiding and abetting a suicide. _Besides_, Luke didn't say, but those begging blue eyes did in their own way,_ I pulled a thorn out of your paw. Doesn't that make you my slave, your majesty?_ Which may or may not be accurate as to how that old fable from his childhood ran. The details are fuzzy, but he can remember the lion and the boy that stopped its suffering. Just, back then he identified with Androcles and pretty much would have figured Luke to be the lion. Never would have expected (even if he did turn out to be the one with a mane of yellow hair) that he'd wind up being the bigger one, the one with liberties and permissions that his cousin doesn't have, and the one owing the debt. The one stuck watching through the windshield of the General Lee as Luke strolls across the grass of Hazzard Square, steady as you please, heading for the gazebo as if he plans to mount the steps and make a speech.

_My fellow Hazzardites, I come before you today to get myself shot. My cousin Bo is too far away to do a dang thing about it, but don't you worry. When my Uncle Jesse figures out how he let me pull this fool stunt—no, more than that, was a willing participant in this fool stunt, my cousin will be just an hour or so behind me in getting himself shot._

Except Jesse would never shoot him. Wouldn't be that simple, no, he'd make Bo go on living even if guilt for what happened to Luke ate away at him every single day until he was nothing more than loose skin draped over a skeleton.

Funny thing, he'd like to blame his dark thoughts on his older cousin, who usually expects the worst out of any given situation. Cynical, wary, the personality of a man who remembers what it was like to have a mother then to lose her, who has been to war and seen men die. At least that's what Bo figures has happened to his cousin; about the only thing he knows for sure is that Luke's tolerance for fun has been slowly draining away, one grain at a time, and eventually that hourglass is going to run empty. Spending day after day in close proximity to that sort of a painfully measured deterioration would make even the sun grow dimmer after a time. And being close to Luke on a day when he's in one of his surlier moods has been known to make Bo start expecting the worst right alongside him.

But he hasn't been close to Luke, not for days now. Even this afternoon, when he's been able to see and even touch his cousin, he keeps getting sent off to the far parts of the county while Luke's stuck here in town. Seems like the link between Luke's moods and his own is not as direct a correlation as he's always assumed. Could just turn out to be the exact opposite, that being apart from his cousin makes his thoughts as dark as they ever get.

Meanwhile his cousin's just biding his time, moseying across the grass, faded blue plaid standing out against the green to provide an easy target for even the poorest marksman. Pausing here and there, as if the breeze is that good to smell or the birds are interesting enough to merit craning his neck to see them. (Then again, to a man that's been locked up in the dim recesses of Claridge County, it might just be that the pretty, puffy, overhead clouds are worth stopping to gawk at.) Up the steps to the gazebo, finally, and just standing there. Waiting for nothing or everything, for Hickman to come strutting out of hiding to confront him in a showdown, maybe. Waiting for anyone at all to care that one Luke Duke is out there in the open, but Bo's doing all the caring for everyone in the county – good guys and bad.

A stretch like he's just waking up from a good, solid nap (when Bo would bet he hasn't slept since getting up early on that morning he rode off to Miss Minnie's by himself) and Luke strides down the steps on the far side of the gazebo. Down the walkway until he's right across the street from the Courthouse. Just about taunting, _can_ _Rollo come out to play?_ but there's still not the slightest movement from any of the windows or doors over there.

Bo is not supposed to move yet, he's meant to be patient and stay out of sight until someone from the enemy camp reacts to Luke's little show out there, but the idea that the response could come in the form of a gunshot has never left his mind. So he rolls the General out of the alley next to the garage, easing him onto the road. No sudden moves, no revving engine, just sliding easy like a snake on the hunt for rats, and if Luke wants to disapprove of his choices, he can just march on over here and tell him so. If doing that would get him out of the line of whatever fire there may be, well that's simply a coincidental side benefit. But Bo's so careful in his movement that even Luke doesn't see him do it.

Or maybe it's the lone pedestrian that's got Luke's attention. Mrs. Dettweiler, looks like, and apparently his cousin's pouring on what passes for Duke charm. Pointing off to the Courthouse and most likely suggesting that she go in there and report having sighted him right outside. Just goes to show how far off the tracks his cousin's mind has jumped if he really reckons that's going to work. There's no way in the world Luke's third grade teacher, who remembers a blue-eyed, quiet little heartbreak of an orphan who sat in the third row (and may or may not have courted Bonnie Connelly, who happened to be the pretty little filly who sat right in front of him), and had a knack for math. There's no way in heck Mrs. Dettweiler's going to turn him over to the darkest bunch of lawmen that have ever taken up residence in Hazzard County. In fact, when he squints his eyes to pick up the finer details of the situation, Bo's pretty sure she's shaking her head, and pointing his older cousin off in the loose direction of away from here. _Go home, Luke Duke, and stay safe. Don't talk to strangers and never, ever walk alone._

Good advice, but for as much as Mrs. Dettweiler has always had a soft spot in her heart for one of her favorite pupils, Luke has never, not once, listened to a teacher. So when she walks off, head shaking all the way, Luke stays put on the curb, holding his own private staring contest with a building – and losing. Damn fool of a cousin blinks first, then does the one thing he promised Bo he wouldn't do. A step off the sidewalk and he's crossing the road. Strutting right up close to that Claridge patrol car parked at the curb, then walking around the front end to head towards the stairs of the County Courthouse.

There's a perfectly good reason that Bo's been ignoring the rules of the road, idling right there on Hazzard Square facing in the wrong direction. Ready to disobey the One Way signs with all the skill in his body and the glee in his soul, because he and his cousin figured out that whoever might emerge from that old brick courthouse would never bother looking to the right for a daring rescue vehicle. And it would work out perfectly, because Luke was going to stay on the far side of the road from where the Claridge law was known to be holed up. Luke Duke scheming at its finest, and were it anyone else that was changing the strategy mid-plan, they'd be on the wrong side of a nasty, blue-eyed glare. But Luke, well, he sees fit to do exactly what he swore he wouldn't and it leaves Bo with some quick maneuvering to work out. He glances out the rear window with intentions of making a near silent, reverse K-turn, but something else catches his eye. Blue, too much of it in one place, and his cousin's got company out there. Unfriendly sort, waving black objects in their right hands, while his Luke's got both of his in the air.

Damn fool cousin.

"Mayday," he hollers into the CB, though he can't remember picking it up. Too busy concentrating on using just his left hand to guide the car around the square the wrong way, because he's not going to take the time for even a quick one-eighty when there are guns being held on his cousin. The Duke boys are just going to have to make it work, even if it isn't half of what they planned. "Mayday," he calls again. "I've got a Mayday on Hazzard Square!"

So much for the stupid CB, he needs two hands on the wheel. It lands wherever he chucks it as he spins the wheel into a hard right. Hits the horn, squeals the tires, and prays.

* * *

He doesn't like it. Doesn't like it at all, reckons it stinks to high heck, and it's about time he fixed it. If only he could put his finger on exactly what it is that he doesn't like.

Could be the empty roads that he's driving over, with no one to wave out the window in greeting to, and not even the smell of half-cooked whiskey mash to sweeten the air. Up here where the air's a little thinner and the trees a lot thicker, there ought to be all manner of late afternoon activity that only a lifetime moonshiner like himself could recognize. Seems like all of Hazzard's entrepreneurs in the liquor trade have gone into hiding like never before, not even when good old Joe Higgins got assigned as the Revenue Agent for the tri-county area back in sixty-nine.

Stills have apparently been shut down voluntarily, but if he doesn't like it, at least he can try to understand it. Under J.D. Hogg, or even at the hands of a federal lawman, a moonshine bust means a fine, probation, maybe prison. It's an inconvenience that holds the potential to be mighty unpleasant, but it's not deadly. With Hickman at the helm, no one quite knows what punishment a liquor violation might lead to. Other than what they've spent the afternoon whispering about, passing from one dark hollow to the next by way of the ridge in between, how Luke Duke's being hunted like a fox that's been raiding the chicken house. So if business has to be suspended for a day or two until the Duke boy manages to get himself shot, Claridge County gets tired of occupying Hazzard, or until each moonshiner can take the time to hide their still that much further into the depths of the mountains here, it's not a particularly likeable development, but it shows a reasonable amount of caution.

There are other things he's not exactly thrilled about, either. Like the way that his Luke got used as a pawn in a trap to snare old J.D. Hogg, and how it all began in that dark little hollow that's been empty – save for Minnie – for a good twenty years now. And trying to get a useful answer out of that woman is like trying to train a rooster not to crow until the dang sun is already up – it's just not going to happen. All the same, he doesn't like the way she swayed and swooned her way out of telling him anything at all, the slightly wild look in her eyes when he stood in front of her demanding answers. That hand, clinging to his overalls, like he was her lifeline, the tenuous connection between her cloudy mind and the clear sunshine of sanity.

Of course, losing the entirety of her family could have done that to her, and if there's anyone who ought to be sympathetic to that, it's Jesse. Brothers, in his case, took the largest toll because they were so young. And because, of course, they were the ones he'd grown up shoulder to shoulder with, pushing and shoving against each other, banding together, running half wild all over this beautiful land they were blessed to be born on. But Minnie never had brothers or sisters, just cousins and they were scattered across neighboring counties, so when her parents were gone, she was alone. Could have married if she'd managed to pick one man to settle with, but she played the field until the only opposite-sex players left out there were too young to consider her a worthwhile teammate.

Still, there's no real excuse for her to be as alone as she is, left to her own crazy devices. Family, even if they're not as close as brothers and sisters, ought to take care of family. Just look at his kids. Only cousins, but that never slowed them down one bit as far as loving and looking out for each other. Took all of Jesse's strength to hold Bo and Daisy back against the urge to storm into Claridge—

Claridge. Minnie has cousins in Claridge. Or did, once up on a time, and it's not like these things have a habit of changing. Chuckie, he thinks, was the older boy, and then there was—

Toe, big one. Pain rubbing and roaring and everywhere at once. Makes him slam it against the gas pedal in hopes of finding some relief.

"Mayday," comes crackling over his CB. Trees are flying by him at high speed, and his stomach pitches with seasickness of the movement. "Mayday," is Bo calling for help, and that explains the toe. "I've got a Mayday on Hazzard Square." Well, it's a good thing he's moving as fast as he is, then. Because he's got a good five miles to cover in short order if he's going to save Bo. And, his toe reminds him as it grates against the leather of his shoe, Luke, too.


	14. Wrong Side of the Road

_**Author's Note: **Yes, my homework is late. No, I do not have an excuse. Yes, I do know that this will go down on my permanent record. I figure that thing's already blemished enough that one more black mark won't make much of a difference anyway..._

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**Chapter Fourteen - Wrong Side of the Road**

Roads in Hazzard are dirt, for the most part. Just byways from here to there and their routes and directions change over time. But, for the most part, people stick to what's already been worn into the grass, between boulders and trees.

That Duke family, though, they've never had any use for the tried and true, the well worn, the generally agreed upon path. Always blazing new trails where none belong, over obstacles, through tight squeezes, up riverbeds and down into the swamp when it suits them.

Under-breath mumblings get groused out about how it's not safe enough just to look both ways at a crossroads, that up and sideways and way-over-yonder have to be checked, too, before proceeding into an intersection. And then there are the muttered complaints that point out how someone could get hurt that way. But those mostly come from outsiders, because anyone who has lived in Hazzard for any amount of time knows that Dukes are the safest reckless drivers in the county.

* * *

Jerry, though he waves his hand indulgently at her as she scrambles toward the door for the second time today, must think she's crazy. Halfway around the bend, because she's leaving the evening rush to him, much like she did at lunch.

Doesn't matter that he couldn't possibly have heard Bo's mayday call, because she barely did and she was right on top of the CB receiver at the time. The bartender is a friend, and he's been hearing all the same rumors that she has about her armed, dangerous and at large oldest cousin. And though he's kept his own counsel on it all, she doesn't reckon old Jerry believes that Luke's done anything more than be in the wrong place at the wrong time. She figures he's accepting responsibility for handling tonight's crowd alone because he's sympathetic to the chaos that Luke's arrest has created in the Dukes' lives.

Out into the sideways-glaring sun of that last hour before it slips below the horizon, running across the same parking lot that she stumbled through only hours ago. At least this time her head is clear and her shoes stay on, even if she's partway blinded by the angle of the evening light. She doesn't need to see to drive, anyway. No one that's been properly trained in moonshine running does.

But it takes longer to sprint to her car and get it running than she wants, seconds feeling like hours as she finds her way out of the parking lot.

"Lost sheep!" her CB screams at her in Uncle Jesse's voice. "You come back now, you hear?" But apparently they don't hear or they're not answering, because after a two second pause there comes a, "Dagnabbit!" that her uncle may or may not have meant to broadcast.

"Shepherd," she calls, even if she's not one of his lost sheep. Despite the nasty tricks time's playing on her, it couldn't have been more than a minute or two since the last radio transmission from her baby cousin. _What's going on out there,_ she wants to ask, but it would only waste more time. She's just going to have to trust that the two and two that she's put together equal approximately four and that Bo hasn't answered a single radio call since his mayday. "I'm on my way," she settles for instead. "What's your twenty?"

"Up on Capshaw Ridge," comes her answer, makes her lean on the gas that much harder. That's a good four to five miles of switchback road Jesse's got to cover before he can get into town, so it's going to be up to her.

"Daisy, now," comes Enos' voice, fast and high, and on another day it would be sweet how worried he sounds. "Don't you go confronting no one by yourself." No one, of course, has to ask her twenty, they all know she was sent off to work, which is a straight shot up Route 81 from town, and she's already covered a good chunk of the distance.

"Enos is right, girl," Cooter agrees, but there isn't a dang one of them doing anything useful. Like suggesting a better plan or even giving their estimated times of arrival at Hazzard Square. And she doesn't have time to bother answering them, not with how all of her concentration and effort has to go into getting to Bo's last known location.

"Daisy," Uncle Jesse calls, and she really ought to just turn off the dang CB. It's a distraction, but then again, it's the only way Bo can reach her if he has an update. "Girl now, you," her uncle's hesitating, stumbling over words, "you be careful now." He knows better than to try to stop her. "Watch your back."

"Ten-four," she says, though she doesn't bother to pick up or even key the CB mic. She needs both hands on the wheel as she swings around the curve that will lead her into Hazzard Square.

* * *

_Dixie_. Followed by hollers and men stumbling around him. Diving, ducking and rolling, and it's a wonder that not a single gun goes off, though one does skitter harmlessly across the pavement. Out of anyone's reach, but it's only one out of four, and Luke reckons that the other three are still in their bearer's hands. Rolling behind bushes and under the sign that announces this to be the County Courthouse of Hazzard, men in blue fall to both sides, and he'd laugh at them if he had the time.

They're fools, strangers that don't belong in Hazzard. Easy distinction, obvious outsiders, because anyone who has lived here since the day Bo Duke hit the public streets in a car knows full well that the boy can drive. When it comes to aiming a car, he never misses his mark, which is why Luke can stand calmly where he's been since the second that first revolver got pulled on him, stilling him on this slab of concrete, and wait for the skid to stop. Screech of tires and there's on orange-and-chrome-rimmed window in front of him. He dives in head first, because even if the cowering men around him are idiots that don't know any better, they're still armed idiots.

Face down across Bo's lap as he feels the acceleration of the car pinning him against his cousin and the seat he's trying to crawl into. "Wrong side of the road, Bo," he comments as he struggles for some kind of hold on the slippery vinyl. Or wrong side of the car, because it was the driver's window he had to dive into, which is how they've come to be tangled this way.

Still driving for all he's worth, even around the torso and legs that have got to be in his way, and Bo doesn't think he's funny at all. He can tell this because one hand comes off the wheel to grab at his belt and shove him ungently to his own side of the car. Mostly, anyway. Seems like he's still got one foot on Bo's knee. Which might be more because his cousin's legs are too long than it is because of the awkward way that he entered the car.

"Dang it, Luke!" More than unamused, Bo's downright upset, and that's a shame. Most days being behind the wheel of the General will make him grin like the whole world's his toy box, and his biggest problem is trying to decide what to play with first. "I ain't the one that was on the wrong side of the road." Yeah, he knows that. But staying within the boundaries that he and Bo drew up when they made the plan wasn't getting them anywhere. He had to up the game. "You was supposed to stay on the green where I could come for you."

"I reckoned you'd adapt just fine," he says, and although he's been proven right in his assumptions, that little fact doesn't calm his testy cousin down one bit. The evidence of his displeasure is right there in how the trees are flying by the windows, low and close, even though they have no pursuers.

"Adapt," Bo spits as the last of Luke's extremities finally makes it onto his own side of the car. "Adapt. Sure, I could adapt. Only how," and Bo's head is turning to glare at him. He spent too much time looking at the vinyl of the seat during their getaway, missed the initial zigs and zags of their flight, and now the scenery is moving at too quick a pace to pinpoint where they are. But it's not a road, more like a path, and he reckons that grabbing onto the doorframe would be a good idea, what with how close the trees come to the sides of the car. "Do you reckon I'd adapt if you'd gotten your dang self shot, huh Luke?"

Well, that's easy. He had no intentions of getting shot, any more than the Claridge law, such as they are, had intentions of shooting him. Same listless men he saw in the jail – Rick (whose name might be Charlie after all, but it's the same deputy that had been escorting him to the bathroom), Jake, Dan and the one with the mustache that he never bothered to try to find out the name of – low ranking lackeys with little interest in blood and gore. Nope, there was never going to be any shooting (which explains why he kept his eyes trained so carefully on those guns, because of course there was no way they would go off) and Bo's worrying over nothing. When he should be worrying about—

"Watch that drop," he hollers at his cousin, but it's too late, they've already crunched down hard into the leaves and stones of a dried stream bed. Seems like Bo figures that since he didn't get shot, it'd be preferable to kill him in a car crash. Not that the General hesitates or even complains about the abuse. Just responds when Bo cranks the wheel left to drive down the dip that the water left behind when it dried out of the old creek that once ran through here. Still site two, he realizes, is Bo's destination. "We ain't going to be able to watch the Square and see whether Hickman comes out of hiding from up here, cuz," he points out logically.

Another glare from Bo, who really ought to be watching where they're going. "You really expect I'm going to take you back down there? You're an even bigger idiot than I thought." Funny how his kid cousin sounds like Jesse, comes off every bit the old man on a tear. About how Luke ought to know better, they had guns, and does he think he is bullet proof? Angry and snappish and worried. (Oh,_ worried_.) "Besides, Hickman ain't going to show up, not with how crowded the Square is about to get. I put out a mayday on you."

Well, so much for his plan. All that risk he took (and he really could have gotten shot, he supposes, now that the adrenaline has worn off, now that his desperate need to taste freedom has been satiated, now that he's thinking instead of acting) amounts to nothing. Except the fear he put into his kid cousin.

"I'm sorry, Bo," is about all he can do to make up for it.


	15. A Fool for Taking Chances

**_Author's Note: _**_Maybe I should just give up on Mondays. And August. Thanks for hanging in anyway!_

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**Chapter Fifteen – A Fool for Taking Chances**

Hiding down in the swamp, back at the Duke farm, slinking along foot trails up into the ridges, strolling across Hazzard Square as if he is not a wanted man. For each of these reputed locations for Luke Duke, there is at least one man swearing upon his ancestors that they know it to be true. Then there are the naysayers, who insist he never escaped out of Claridge in the first place, who reckon he's already in Atlanta, imprisoned without trial or conviction.

Too many voices, piling on top of each other as they feed out of telephones and CBs, chatter in the hairdresser's and the café. Din, no agreement can come out of it, except this: the Duke boys are like cats, creeping on silent paws, pouncing when they sight their prey. They always land on their feet and they have nine lives. Each.

* * *

Sorry. Luke's sorry, but about what? That his fine and perfect plan got ruined by his kid cousin making a mayday call? Well he can just get over that. If they'd been tuned into the right CB frequency, Bo would have called in the National Guard to save his cousin. Who doesn't have the first idea what it was like to watch him standing there with four guns pointed at him. Hands up in the air, posture rigid, and he looked small. Vulnerable. Like nothing Bo ever wants to see again.

"Well, I ain't sorry," he snaps, because he's been worrying about Luke for two-and-a-half days now. Two-and-a-half days and those first two weren't his cousin's fault, but this afternoon, that was all Luke's doing. "I ain't gonna sit still and watch you get yourself shot over some stupid plan that you think is gonna bring Hickman out from hiding." He skids the General to a stop almost as an afterthought. They're at the top of the rise that marked their main still site back in the days when he was a young teen and his primary duty was lugging supplies over the far side of the hill, where there was nothing more than a little groove worn into the ground by Luke's feet in front of his. Forty pound bag of sugar slung over his cousin's shoulder and Luke would march like it weighed nothing while Bo carried the half fermented corn. If his bag was lighter, it was also less wieldy. Just tied burlap that would bang against the close trees on either side, whether he carried it down low or up over his shoulder. Luke would ask him what was taking him so long, impatient adolescence rearing its ugly head. Better places to be if only they could get the work done. But he'd stop, stare back at him, wait for his shorter-legged cousin to catch up. He'd offer to trade burdens with that lopsided grin of his, and Bo would swing the bag of corn around to swat him on the back with it, and if that little gesture left a slimy smear smelling of rotted corn across Luke's shirt, that was just the perils of teasing Bo Duke.

And Luke's sitting over there now, hands raised in surrender, face a mask of innocence, but it doesn't fix anything, doesn't make him any less a fool for taking chances. Just means he's placating, humoring his baby cousin, same as standing in the middle of the woods with a bag of sugar weighing down his shoulder, and smirking at how it took Bo longer to get himself to the top of the hill.

"And don't go telling me how it wasn't no big deal, Luke." Because those are most likely the exact words that were about to come out of his cousin's mouth. About making mountains out of molehills, but getting shot is more than a molehill. It's an open, bleeding, chest wound and the nearest hospital a county away. "Maybe you reckon because you been to war and had guns pointed at you before," oh, but he doesn't really want to think about that. About how many times he's almost lost his cousin, and today's little episode really _is_ nothing compared to Vietnam, but it was enough to scare him half to death. Makes him wonder how it is that Luke isn't half batty from his war experience. "That a bullet would just bounce right off of you. But I ain't willing to take that chance."

"All right," Luke placates, and that's it. The car's too small for his anger or Luke's calm or maybe there's just not enough seat for two Duke boys. He grabs the roof and starts pulling himself up through the window but it doesn't work very well. Not with the way Luke's got a grip on his leg, tugging to keep him from getting out. Away, all he wants is a few minutes not to have to be so close to his patronizing older cousin, but he can't even manage that much. Luke's got all the leverage to his none. "Settle down, Bo," comes the command.

"I don't want to settle down," sounds just as petulant as a four-year-old, and he hates it. No way to take it back, though. About all he can do is stop fighting, because he's getting tired of losing. "I just got you back. I ain't ready to lose you again," he pants. He's winded from struggling, that's all, and if the words grate against his throat on the way out, it's only because he can't get enough air into his lungs. It's got nothing to do with what he's said, or the fact that he's not even sure whether he's referring to just getting Luke back from jail today or from the Marines a few years ago.

"Okay," Luke answers in that same calm voice he's heard all his life. Hand on his shoulder, and he'd assume it's just there to keep him in place, except for the pulse of it: squeeze, release, squeeze, release. Setting a suggested rhythm for Bo's breathing, and even if he'd like to resist it, he can't. "You're right." It isn't placating or patronizing or anything but agreement. It's—he ought to be grateful for what it is, an end to the argument that never got started. And he'll get around to feeling relieved or happy or whatever it is he's meant to feel, as soon as his done being mad for all the things Luke did and didn't do. "Until we get this thing figured out, I ain't going nowhere without you, all right?"

"You'd better not," tries to be angry or sulky or frustrated and fails on all accounts. He's going to forgive his cousin—in fact, he already has. "You just remember you said that," he grouses for good measure, but he doesn't have to. Luke's a Duke; he keeps his promises. An arm around his cousin's shoulders, because it's habit, tradition. Dukes forgive Dukes with hugs, even if Luke's not exactly the most affectionate of Dukes. He comes easily enough anyway, slings his right arm around Bo despite the fact that the seat is too small and cramped for a proper hug. "Because I ain't pulling no fool stunt like that again." Skidding up onto a sidewalk crowded with men, and even if they were holding guns on Luke, Bo doesn't exactly have the stomach to handle running them over with a car.

"All right, all right," Luke acknowledges, the same way he always shrugs off snide comments and teasing. Halfway agreeing with whatever's been said and taking away all the fun of picking on him. And when the words are said, the thump comes on Bo's back; Luke's hand indicating that this here hug is over, and may only have been tolerated in the first place because it was the fastest way to making peace. "Ain't you going to call off that mayday?"

Oh, yeah. Seems like he let his temper get the best of him, let it make him leave their family and friends to worry about them. Maybe. Seems they ought to have been worried, but for folks that are worrying, they've been awfully quiet for the last several minutes. Then again, "The dang CB's turned off. Probably from your brilliant maneuver climbing in here," he points out as he reaches down for the power knob. "You'd best hope you didn't break it."

"Ain't my fault you was on the wrong side of the road," he gets reminded. Silly little grin there on Luke's face, flashes him back to remember that wider smile Luke got to wearing as he climbed his way in here after facing down those guns. That smile – Bo would jump the General over the Grand Canyon if it would bring out that smile once a day. He just reckons there have got to be better ways to see his cousin happy than to go around risking their lives. Considers telling Luke so, but by then the CB is on and there are other voices filling the car.

"…Out on Choctaw Crossing," that's Cooter, caught mid-sentence. What's out on Choctaw Crossing?

"All right, you go on out that way, then." Jesse, barking orders that make no sense at all. "Daisy, you just stay there and keep an eye out. I'm searching along Route 36." Bo's eyes swivel right to catch Luke's. _What are they up to?_ The silent question. _I don't know_, the shrugged answer. "Dang it, Lost Sheep," comes clamoring over the airwaves. "Where are you?"

"I'm coming too, Sheriff," Enos hollers, before Bo can manage to get a solid grip on their CB mic, using that overly excited high pitched voice that he saves for emergencies.

"Shepherd," he jumps in, hopes he beats Rosco to the punch or Jesse's just going to get static and scramble, "we're fine. Disregard the mayday in town. We, uh, took a detour." Deception, maybe, but it's necessary, considering they're sharing the airwaves with lawmen that really don't need to know that they've slipped away to a still site.

"Well you just take another one," their uncle yells at them as if they've been doing nothing more than napping at chore time instead of running for their – well Luke's more than his, really – lives. "Out to Whispering Hollow. Rosco's been hollering from there about something." Probably full of ijits and wijits and who the heck could get half a clue what he was going on about with all those nonsense syllables mixed in anyway?

"Ten-four," he answers as Luke reaches across his body to start the car for him, seeing as how his own hand is busy holding the CB. "We'll be there in two shakes of a lamb's tail."

And while Luke smirks at him for talking about lambs when he really ought to be driving, Jesse's voice comes booming back over the airwaves again.

"And don't you_ ever_ do that," the_ that_ doesn't get clarified, but Bo would bet a tank of gas and maybe an oil change too, that he's referring to hollering mayday, then turning off the CB. Which, he would have liked to point out to his uncle, wasn't his fault. But when the old man's on a tear is never the right time to clarify these things. "To me again, you hear?"

Bo hears just fine. Reckons the whole county heard that one just fine. But if he'd normally dip his chin and mumble something about being sorry when he got yelled at like a little boy that got his school clothes dirty, right now he's sitting here in the General when there's driving to be done. So he hands the CB over to Luke, grabs the steering wheel and puts the pedal to the floor. Good thing his cousin already put the car into reverse or they'd be careening over the far side of the hill now.

"Yes, sir," he hears Luke answer their uncle, and then there's nothing but the rev of the General's engine and the dirt path in front of him.

* * *

Dipstick deputies and their idiot ideas. Enos calling over the radio for a ten-nineteen and Rosco had to ignore him until he could dig his manual out of the glove compartment and turn it to the right page. Ten-nineteen, a meeting. The boy wanted to get together somewhere and talk, but he had to go calling it a ten-nineteen. Numbers Rosco never bothered to memorize because he and Enos have never had meetings, they see far too much of each other already and he didn't exactly feel the need to go out of their way to see each other even more.

A ten-nineteen, and he tried to get out of it, told the deputy he was busy tracking criminals instead of lollygagging about asking for meetings, but the boy was insistent. Promised not to take more than a minute, and he'd even come to Rosco if only he'd give out his ten-twenty.

Dang right his deputy would have to come to him. It was time that boy remembered who his superior officer was, and if anyone had the right to call a ten-nineteen, it was Rosco. Who called one right there on that spot and summoned the dipstick to him out on Old Mill Road. Skepticism, confusion, all manner of questioning in the boy's voice about what he was doing out on Old Mill Road, but that just went to show how his deputy wasn't half the lawman that his superior officer was. This whole dang mess started with the Dukes and it would end with the Dukes, and it wouldn't surprise him one bit if, in the middle, Boss Hogg was cooped up somewhere at the Duke farm.

Though Enos, it turned out, wanted him to go in a different direction.

"Jacob Jordan," he started with and it didn't make a whole lot of sense. "From the Police Academy," didn't do anything to clear it up, and the boy was over there in his own cruiser, parked window-to-window with Rosco, and blabbering in that high pitched voice. Overly excited and it wasn't becoming of a lawman to act that way. "He's from over in Claridge."

"Claridge," Rosco's mouth repeated, though he couldn't swear he was all that interested. Not really, not when Boss was missing, and what did someone named Jacob Jordan that Enos knew from the Police Academy have to do with that? "Claridge?" The boy needed to clarify himself. "Enos, don't be wasting my time, now." Rookies always made a mess of everything. Once, and not all that long ago really, Rosco had himself a whole posse of deputies, and some of them were dang good, too. But Boss (bless his fat little heart) cut the budget and everyone's salaries in half and when all the chips fell where they were going to, it was only him and Enos left. A whole crop gone, and Rosco got stuck with the weeds.

"No, Sheriff, listen!" Still that high pitched squeal, and Rosco was listening, he'd been listening all along. Listening hard enough that now he had to stick a finger in his ear and wiggle it around to clear it from that horrible sound his deputy just made. "Jacob Jordan is a deputy over there in Claridge. And he's also Minnie Jordan's cousin's boy." A nod followed on that, like Enos had just connected all the dots when really, all he'd accomplished was to waste five of Rosco's precious minutes.

"Enos!" he commanded, and the boy's back straightened. That might just be the one good thing about his lone remaining deputy. The kid, at least, knows respect. Unlike most youngsters today. "You came all the way over here to tell me that? Well hell, boy, ain't nobody that don't know that." Not that Rosco had thought about it until now, but he had most certainly known it all along. "Just, go on now, just git." The boy pulled him away from his surveillance of the property where Boss Hogg was most likely being held, a captive to the Duke gang (who must have schemed to get Luke arrested just so they could pull this whole thing off – the more he thought about it, the more it made sense) just to remind him about who was related to whom. When if you just did the math you'd realize that everyone was related to everyone, really, all the way back to Adam and Eve. "Go up on Bramble Hill and look for them up there." It was about as far away as he could send the boy.

"But Sheriff!" Same high pitched tone, and the deputy never knew when to quit. "Luke said I should search the west part of the county. And Bramble Hill, well it's way down south."

Insubordination, downright mutiny and he wouldn't tolerate it. Not on his force. "Enos!" he hollered, and his car was too small. Puny little thing that was nothing more than an echo chamber. Set off ringing in his ears, and if a man couldn't yell at his own deputy in his own squad car without giving himself a headache, well then, the car was just too small. "Who do you work for, me or that depraved Duke boy?"

"You, sir," and that was a good boy. If there was a _but_ waiting there on Enos' lips, Rosco wasn't going to give him half a chance to say it.

"Then git!"

Enos, knowing what was good for him and on which side his biscuit was buttered, got.

Which is how it has come to be that Rosco's alone now, sitting under a canopy of weeping something-or-other trees in Whispering Hollow. Down where the sun has already set over the ridge behind him, and the shadows are deep enough that a man needs a flashlight to see the sheriff's log book balanced on his knee. He watches, waits, tries to be patient as lights come on in the house down there in the depths of the hollow. Too many lights for one old woman, but he doesn't move, not on that alone. Could be she's afraid of what lurks in the dark, even if it is just the sheriff of her county. And an owl, probably some snakes, maybe a bear – but there's no point in letting his thoughts drift too far in that direction. Lights, and then there are shadows down there, moving behind those lace curtains that blow with every late spring breeze. More than one person moving around in that house, but the woman does have family. Even if none of them have been known to visit Hazzard since about nineteen sixty-two—he keeps still for another whole minute, even if his body _is _itching to get down there.

Waits until he reckons it's probably dinner time (which he gauges, more or less, by the grumbling of his own stomach) then lets out the parking brake of his cruiser. Slides it into neutral and just drifts. Not exactly a road that he's on, but it's not a cliff, either, just a big, sloping hill and a cop wasn't meant to take the safe route, not on a stakeout like this. This is just the risks of the trade, and if the car has to be towed back out of this little hollow tomorrow, it only means that Rosco is a fearless leader, the kind whose dogged pursuit of criminals makes him a cut above the rest. And if the back wheels get beached on a boulder, well it's only half a problem, really. Keeps him from getting as close as he'd like but he's still got feet and they'll work just fine, they'll get him right up close to that one window where he can already count four heads, and only one of them has a bun on top of it. The rest have short hair, short to almost missing, running on bald and fat and—

He's not out of the car yet, hasn't even managed to get the door open, but he reckons that's a good thing, maybe the best thing that has happened today. Means he's right there next to his police band radio, which he turned off because he was on a stakeout and didn't need the squalling chatter of a green-behind-the-ears deputy giving away his strategic location, didn't need anyone and that's why he's turning on the radio now. Because he doesn't need anyone's help, but then again, it wouldn't be the end of the world if some of them showed up now.

"Ijit," he calls into the radio, and that just isn't proper police code. "I got 'em, they're here and," isn't a whole lot better. "Whispering Hollow," seems to be about the best he can manage. "Whispering Hollow and I'm going in." Drops the microphone on his passenger seat, disentangling his legs from where they've gotten caught in the floor mat, kicking the door open and standing up to his full six feet. There's all manner of chatter over the radio, but he can't pay it any mind because he's the sheriff in these here parts and he's got a job to do. "All right, freeze!" he screams out, with a voice loud enough to scare humans and bears alike, into the musky air.


	16. A Turning Tide

**_Author's note: _**_I could give you all the whys and wherefores, or I could just post the chapter. All in favor of me just posting the chapter? Yeah, I thought so._

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**Chapter Sixteen – A Turning Tide**

Takes its time, but then a turning tide always does. To make its way from nerves and tension, whispered anxiety, through murmured self-righteousness with a pit stop at self-pity. Helplessness, at the mercy of those with more power or more money, and nothing to do but grouse about it at the local watering hole or the grocery store. Frustration then, building up to a hum and buzz about what can't be changed. Stalls at a drone until it's too much to take, like a tuneless version of _One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall_ coming from the back seat of a compact car at the beginning of a two-day road trip.

Then, and only then, does it turn. Away from where lethargy dictates, and off to better places. Reminders about how this is Hazzard County, not South Claridge County. Dukes, rabble rousers and wild drivers that they may be, are an integral part of this place, and in his own domineering way, so is Boss Hogg. Hard to care about both parties at the same time, what with them always being at odds, but if you blow the dust off the mess, look closely at all the bits and pieces, it turns out that their slots and grooves all manage to fit together.

And once the turning starts, it gains a momentum all its own. Dukes would give the last stitch of clothing off their backs if another needed it more. Hogg would never give another living soul a single thing, but he's held the county together through recession and natural disaster, if only to line his own pockets. Leaving them to fend for themselves against Claridge County law is nothing more than yellow-bellied cowardice.

_We could help_, someone whispers, and it mutates, gets twisted on the lips of farmers, barbers, short order cooks and moonshiners until it's more of a battle cry. _Save Hazzard!_ and they're off. No organization, no direction, but that's fine. The tide has turned.

* * *

His arm starts up where his toe leaves off. Or left off, come to think of it, the toe stopped hurting sometime between crossing over the covered bridge on Rockville Road and the paved roads of town. Should have known right then that his boys were out of immediate danger, but he was too busy getting drawn toward the timbre of Daisy's voice. Waver in her tone, because she'd reached Hazzard Square and her cousins were nowhere to be seen. Just some small activity in front of the courthouse, and she was going in. Distraction, the girl kept him from thinking properly, what with how he had to talk her out of her heroics. Him and Cooter, because the mechanic had been in that courthouse once today, and he knew exactly how unsavory its occupants were. _Wait, just wait for backup_, Jesse'd begged, and that, finally, had worked. Not that he noticed the lack of toe pain right then and there, no. That part hadn't happened until he heard Bo's voice again, announcing how they'd been fine, just fine while their female cousin was on the brink of walking headfirst into the exact kind of danger that Luke had only managed to weasel his way out of a few hours ago. And when he finally figured out that his toe wasn't ailing him anymore, there was the arm.

Bursitis, Lavinia used to say, but it's not that, never was. It's just overused muscles complaining about how they're going to get used again. Wielding a strap and he would really have thought that somewhere along the line his boys would have outgrown the need for whippings. But he and his tired arm muscles are just going to have to get over that notion, because the both of them are doomed to a lifetime of teaching lessons to fools who really ought to know better.

Sets his mind to the knowledge that as soon as he gets done hugging his boys, he'll be sure to get on with the lesson teaching. But before he can do either of those things, there's this wild goose chase of Rosco's that got called in somewhere after Bo's mayday and before his sheepish admission that the two Duke boys were just fine after all. Except the chase is not so much wild as weird, and it's not so much a goose they're chasing after as an old maid. Whispering Hollow never was much of a bevy of activity, but there was a community there once. Small one, reasonably quiet, growing crooked rows of corn and raising milking goats, mostly. The land there has never been friendly, but it's mighty pretty, and for some folks that was enough. Until the generation after his grew up figuring they knew better than their parents about how to make a good life for themselves, and wandered off to other corners of the county and the state. One by one they abandoned what had been home until there was only one left: Minnie.

"What's everyone's twenty?" That's his Luke, playing Sergeant again. Oh, the boy's smart, he's always been plenty bright enough, but it used to be in a much quieter way. Kept all to himself in the smug knowledge that he was just that much more clever than anyone else in the room. So quiet about it that no one much realized, not even his teachers – especially not his teachers, come to think of it – how he was scheming all the time, figuring things out that no kid had a right to figure out on their own.

The reports come in, revealing that Enos has a head start on all of them in getting to Whispering Hollow, followed by Cooter and Daisy, then Jesse. Furthest away are the boys, but that doesn't matter, not one bit. They'll still be the first ones there, because they've got Bo behind the wheel. Instinctive, skilled, confident, that boy is downright _talented_ when it comes to driving. Lacks the good sense that even a chicken gets born with about what's safe and what might just get him killed. Boy is made out of a confection of fine spun trust that the world won't let him down and gravity will never be his enemy, and that even if something doesn't quite work out the way he wants it to, his family (mostly Luke, and in truth, there's not a one of them that can remember it ever being any other way) will catch him if he falls. Which means those boys of his won't be bothering with speed limits or roads or laws of physics, and they'll somehow manage to get from Chester Creek (which means they were up at still site two the whole time that their family and friends were frantic about them) all the way to Whispering Hollow before anyone else does.

"Ten-four," Luke acknowledges, then starts doling out routes to everyone, so that they'll manage to approach from as many directions as possible, with the hope of preventing escape. And that's fine, just fine. Let his oldest take over the planning and commanding, because Jesse's got some thoughts to work through. About Whispering Hollow and its last resident, and whether she's a willing participant in whatever's going on here (_this all started at her house_, is how logic nags against his better nature) or if she's in as much trouble as old J.D. Hogg is, as Rosco's about to be, as Luke was (and probably will be again very soon). The woman's a fool, but then there's never been a time when she wasn't. It's just a question of what kind of fool – deliberate or unwitting – and the only way he's going to find out is to keep on driving until he reaches her house. Reckons it's a good thing his boys will get there first, really, because he's halfway temped to grab Minnie by the arms and try to shake the truth from her. (Oh, but his mother raised him better than that.)

* * *

She reckons there's no two ways about it. Come midnight or tomorrow morning, or whenever they all manage to drag their sorry tails home, she's going to have to take the mop handle to Bo and Luke. Oh, they'll be tired, the whole lot of them, she won't want to chase and they won't want to run, but it's got to happen. Someone's going to have to teach them not to go disappearing after a mayday call.

But maybe more important than that, she needs to remind them about how she can take care of herself. Not only that, she can take care of them, too, by chasing them right into the barn and making sure they stay there until the smell of Maudine makes them beg her for mercy. Seems they forget, all too often, how resourceful she is. Which they really ought to have stopped doing all these years of starched shorts, burned breakfasts, hidden hairbrushes (though it's really only Bo's skin that that particular one gets under), and swats with a spatula later. But they're _men_, they're fools, which is most likely why she's been assigned the longest possible route to get into Whispering Hollow.

Oh sure, there's logic behind it, the kind Luke doesn't even have to explain because it's obvious. About how she's coming in from the east, and the only one that's preventing whoever or whatever it might be that Rosco's found from escaping in that direction. But when it comes right down to it, the hollow is nothing more than a little gap between one hill and another. Narrow, wooded, and there really aren't a lot of ways to approach a hollow, not in a car. And the best way to get out of one, assuming there was pursuit involved, would be to scamper up one slope or the other on foot, always keeping the higher ground and taking full advantage of the vegetation.

"I'm ten-five, ten-five on the scene," Enos declares in that hurried, high-pitched squeak that marks him as the same excitable little boy he's always been. And if her instincts are right, that call only means he's sighted the hollow, hasn't actually arrived yet. Talking in police code because it wouldn't occur to him to do otherwise, but technically, he's not ten-five on the scene until he crashes his car into a tree or Rosco's cruiser or, if he's particularly lucky, just manages to pull it to a safe stop on the edge of the dirt road.

And that's another quarrel she's going to have to have with her cousins, the fool men. About how even if he wears a badge and has a gun on his hip, Enos should never be the first one to get to any crime scene. All forward momentum and no brakes; one of these days he's going to crash headlong into trouble and no one's going to be there to help him. Assuming that what Rosco has sighted is more than a possum with a bad case of the mange, Enos could be in a messy heap of jeopardy right now.

Then again, if what's in Whispering Hollow has anything to do with certain Claridge lawmen, well there's no real worry about them running off on foot. The only Claridge law that's in good enough shape to try that are those boys that she saw scrambling around on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse.

"All right, Enos," comes over the airwaves in Luke's voice. "We see you." And as she looks across the gap to the opposite ridge, she can see some hopeful sights of her own. White pickup, running just about parallel to her, and below that, maybe halfway down to the hollow, a wrecker. She reckons that within about two minutes, all of them will be seeing each other a lot more up close and personal. "Look out!" is a hurried holler from her oldest cousin, then there's the echo of bending metal making its bouncing way up from the hills below. Followed by squawking birds, roused by the noise from bedding down for the night.

And the shame of it is, there's nothing she can do but keep driving down the twists and turns of the ridge until she reaches the bottom of the hollow. Where, if it is in fact the place that Hickman and friends are holed up, the Dukes and the Hazzard law have lost the element of surprise.


	17. A Few More Holes Than Yesterday

**_Author's note: _**_A three-day turnaround. For Dixie Davenport because she asked so nicely._

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**Chapter Seventeen – A Few More Holes Than Yesterday**

Hazzard. Even the hissing sound of the place warns strangers off, suggests they watch where they step and what they get themselves into. A bark of a name, because its residents don't want to bite, not if they don't have to. They'd rather offer a meal, a sip of lemonade, a quiet place to rest in the shade. Most days.

But when the heat is highest and tempers shortest, when outsiders barge in with intent to conquer, to own, to say what's fitting and what's not, hospitality gets locked away behind the sugar dish, valuables get stored under the mattress. It is on these days that Hazzardites take to the fields and hills, not to sow or to reap or to brew, but to claim what is theirs.

Murmurs float on breezes, across town and out into the thickest woods. Whispering Hollow. Hazzard takes care of its own.

* * *

Precision, timing, an understanding of the physics of driving – all of these skills are utterly lacking in the members of Hazzard's law enforcement. Even Enos, who was taught by a fine 'shine runner. Then again, he's good at most parts of driving, so long as they involve gaining momentum. It's that little skill called _stopping_ at which the deputy utterly fails.

"Look out!" And no amount of Luke yelling (whether it's at him or Enos or both) is going to make it any more possible to avoid the inevitable. Bald tires, slow right foot, narrow passageway, and Enos is hogging the whole of it with his suddenly sideways-skidding patrol car. Nothing to do but slam on the General's brakes, brace himself on the steering wheel and grit his teeth. Meanwhile Luke ducks down behind the safety of his own arm, because he never can stand to look when there's going to be a crash. Too fast, too fast, then everything stops just as suddenly as it started. Bending metal, ranking somewhere in his top three least favorite sounds, the rocking motion as momentum tries to plaster him into the steering wheel, then nothing but the complaints of birds fleeing from nearby trees.

"You all right?" That's Luke, worried as always, assuming the worst simply because they've gone crashing into another car. A little fender bender (although he reckons Enos' car got more than its fender bent, but the General's made of tougher stuff and his dents can probably just be banged out to make him good as new) and his sourpuss cousin has to go worrying that someone got hurt.

"Fine," he's no more beat up than he was coming into this little adventure, just those scrapes on his wrist from the handcuffs and that band aid on his palm from where Luke dug out that splinter. "You?" All right, maybe he's a little bit concerned about Luke, too.

"Yeah. Best go check on Enos." Because they slammed head on into the passenger side of the cruiser and in the dust-filled dim light of the darkening hollow, they can't seem to spot the deputy. Even if Miss Minnie's house is lit up like an old-timer's birthday cake that's overloaded with candles. Funny, he never would have figured that she had so many electrical lights, what with how dingy this corner of Hazzard has always been. And the gathering dusk eats up the brightness glowing from the house, nibbling away at it until there's not enough to see by out here in the road. He's halfway out of the car, squinting over toward the cruiser whose engine is still hissing and ticking as it cools, when he hears what's got to be his number one least favorite sound. Gunshots pinging of the General's metal flesh.

"Get down," Luke whisper-yells at him, as if he needs the instructions. He knows what he needs to do, it's only his suddenly too-long legs that seem to miss the message. Staying in the car while the rest of him is bailing out, staying as low as he can, and as much as it seems to happen in slow motion, it's still all too fast, the way the ground comes up to meet him. Not the most graceful exit from the car ever, what with how it's mostly face first, but at least he's low, well-protected by the steel shield of a corner created by the way the two cars impacted one another. Luke's still up there with only an open window between him and Miss Minnie's house.

He's got to get his legs under him, got to find his way to upright so he can check on his cousin, but before he can manage it he hears Luke's voice.

"This here's Luke Duke calling Jesse, Daisy, and anyone else approaching Whispering Hollow: come in with caution. We've got gunfire out here." Leave it to the latent Marine in Luke to try to save others before himself. Bad habit, really, gets his cousin in deeper and deeper, when actually, Jesse and Daisy are smart enough to be careful on their own, and it's Luke who bears looking after.

"Get down here," Bo hisses at him, even as he manages to get to his knees and spot Luke crawling across the seat toward the driver's side and relative safety. The point of a thick finger silhouetted against the lights of Minnie's house, and Bo turns to look. There's Enos, sneaking stealthily out of his own car, hiding behind the door. Seems like scant coverage compared to the space Bo's occupying and that Luke's finally following him into. Slinking as low as he can, old Luke is, but he's got to get up and over the sill of the window, and one of these days they really do need to unweld those doors.

"You boys just stay put," comes from over Enos' way, and that's a perfectly fine instruction that he intends on heeding the second that Luke's feet hit the dirt over here. For now he just shuffles over a little closer to the patrol car to make room for his cousin to come down. Face first, it seems, and that makes two Duke boys getting out of the car the same way they would if they'd had a bit too much moonshine. Though Luke manages a bit more grace than Bo did on the way down. Hands and knees and, "I'll take care of this," Enos calls over the sound of bullets pinging off rocks and trees. Luke's eyes meet his in what little light there is, half amused, half horrified, wholly skeptical. "All right," is Enos' high pitched screaming voice, trying to take command. "Y'all in there. Drop your weapons and come out with your hands up. You're under arrest!"

Funny how the shots seem to come faster after that, how Enos scuttles back to take shelter at the rear of his car, putting more metal between himself and the projectiles that tear through the air.

Raised eyebrow from Luke, then, "What do we got in the trunk?"

Well, a few more holes than yesterday, for starts.

"Crowbar," Bo offers. "Spare tire. That old blanket and," pause there because that next ping comes too close for comfort. They both duck lower before Bo adds, "some antifreeze? I think." Luke's head is shaking in defeat about all of this when Bo offers, "But our bows is in the back seat." Sardonic little smirk from Luke that asks him just how funny he thinks he needs to be when they're under fire like this, and he answers it with a grin. "Dynamite, too."

As much as Bo expects it to, that part doesn't make his cousin grin back at him. "Nah," he says. "Can't use that out here, not when its dark and we don't know where Boss is."

"Nor Rosco," Bo reminds him. The sheriff's cruiser's not more than thirty feet from here, beached on a rock, but there's been no sign of the man himself. "We can't go blowing no one up by mistake," he concurs.

"Nor on purpose, neither," he gets corrected as Luke shifts his weight upward again, back toward the interior of the car and the weapons they'll need. Enos' gun is drawn too, though the deputy's not using it.

A bow gets handed out to him, then Luke's back with his own. Scuttling his way toward where their push bar is mashed into Enos' passenger door, and they take rough aim and start firing arrows. No real visible targets, but as Luke has made clear, hitting someone is not their current goal. About the best they can hope for is to spook the enemy into firing off all the ammunition they've got, and the older Duke boy is most likely counting shots. Pointless activity, what with how they have no idea how many men or guns are out there, but it's the kind of thing his cousin would do all the same.

"Y'all, y'all surrender now!" comes from Enos' vantage point only a few feet away. Frantic sort of a call, and there's no real telling whether he's talking to the Duke boys or whoever's firing at them from the house. Doesn't matter anyway, it's a fruitless attempt. No one's got any intentions of surrendering to anyone.

And it is into this violent little standoff that Jesse drives, the squeal of his brakes audible between Enos' shouts and the bullets that all but laugh at the notion of submission. He might like to tell his uncle to get out while the getting's good, but, "Boys!" comes the call from where the old man's climbing out of the pickup and finding shelter wherever he can. Of course there's no way Jesse would leave this scene, not without doing everything in his power to save his kin, first.

"We're fine, Uncle Jesse," he hollers back from where he's squatting down, resting his back on the General's fender and waiting for a break in the action around them. Luke's there at his shoulder, staying just as low as he is, because there's not a ton that arrows can do, not in the dark when they can't see the enemy and don't know where Boss and Rosco are. More reinforcements arrive in the form of one tow truck with an unarmed mechanic inside, and it occurs to him to wonder how safe Daisy is. With any luck, she turned tail at the first sound of gunfire.

There's the report of their uncle's squirrel gun, which sounds almost like a child's toy compared to the rest of the artillery around them, shots coming from more sides than he can make sense of. Squinting into the darkness, he catches the flicker of light at the end of a gun barrel coming from somewhere on the other side of Enos' car.

"Sunshine," he whispers in amazement. Looks like Jesse done brought the cavalry; there are some other old-time moonshiners beyond old Sunshine, hiding behind trees and boulders and whatever throws a big enough shadow to keep them hidden from the house. Seems like the odds just got evened, and maybe they have a chance of surviving to see tomorrow.

Which is why it makes no sense that Luke's body suddenly stiffens next to his.

* * *

"Where do you think you're going?" Bo's got a grip on his arm, firm one. The kind he might otherwise shake off, if it weren't for those hissed words, halfway angry with him already for even considering moving out of this relatively safe little corner they're in.

"Come on," he answers instead. Doesn't want to, has every desire in the world to leave his cousin right here in what might just be the choicest little spot in this whole corner of the county, what with the way that artillery is shattering sawdust out of trees and blasting pebbles out of boulders. But he promised, while the General sat on the soil of an abandoned still site (where their whiskey past has bound all the Dukes tighter together than blood ties alone ever could) in the pink light of late afternoon, not to leave his cousin behind. So he turns the grip around, his hand grasping onto Bo's forearm, locking the two of them together more securely than handcuffs could ever hope to.

"Luke," but though the physical connection between them is solid, their brains are on two divergent paths. A couple of days spent in different counties and there's static on the wavelength to which their minds are usually so finely tuned. Or maybe it's just interference from all that's going on around them, but Bo's got no idea what he plans to do, and doesn't figure it's worth risking their necks until he knows more.

So Luke announces his destination: "Uncle Jesse. Come on," he tries again, but Bo's got no real interest in making that mad dash from here to there, not when the in-between is vulnerable to fast-moving projectiles. "All right," he gives in, because it's not really their mind reading that's gone amiss, it's his better judgment. There was a time, fresh in his memory though it's been several years now, when he had no choice but to sprint across open areas in the midst of gunfire. It got to be – not routine exactly, but something he was well-practiced at, maybe even good at. But it's nothing Bo's ever had reason to do, and the caution and self-preservation that he's displaying is the better part of wisdom, really. There are better ways to handle this.

So he pulls a one-eighty, not nearly as pretty as the kind his cousin can pull behind the wheel of a car, but it serves its purpose and gets them headed in the right direction. Over to the undamaged back door of Enos' cruiser, open and inside. "Stay low," he cautions, but Bo already knows that even better than he does. Reaching up and over the seat with his free hand, he has to expose himself to danger, but only for a second. Tugs gently on the cord to get the C.B. microphone into the back seat with them, and he's ready to go.

"This here's Luke Duke calling Uncle Jesse, Cooter and anyone else out there. Cease fire. You've got to cease fire."

"What the heck are you doing?" Bo doesn't like this plan any more than the one that had them running over to deliver this message to Jesse all personal-like. Luke squeezes the arm in his grip to settle his cousin, at least long enough for him to make this broadcast.

"Cease fire!" he commands again, trying to sound every bit like a commanding officer. "Boss Hogg might be in there." That right there might just have been a mistake. Seems like maybe the firing picks up right then. "And Rosco," because they don't know where he is. "And Minnie Jordan," who might just pull on the sympathy of some of the shooters out there. But it's not just the list of the names of the missing that matter. What's important is the thing he never gets around to saying. _Someone could get hurt this way. Killed, and dead is forever. The bodies can get carried off the battlefield, given a proper burial, but it doesn't make them any less dead. _And he's never wanted that lesson to follow him back into Hazzard. So, "Cease fire," he says one more time. Hears Jesse echoing it, hears how the fury of pings and pops, ricochets and echoes, begins to die down. He'd like to close his eyes and sag back against the seat in relief, but just because the battle's gotten quieter doesn't mean it's won. One more tug on Bo's arm, and they're sliding over to the other side of the car, slipping out the driver's side back door, staying sheltered there.

"Hickman," he calls out into the mostly quiet, heavily humid air. His breath lingers as vapor reflected in the light flooding out from Miss Minnie's house. "Let Boss go. And any other hostages you got. We ain't gonna fire on you no more. You let them go, then you just walk out of there and off into the woods. We ain't going to stop you." Of course, they'll call in the State Police the second the hostages are safe on this side of the combat zone, but there's no particularly good reason that he needs to mention that right now. "We're putting down our weapons." Or he would if he knew where his was. Seems he must have left it behind somewhere back when the bullets were flying and they were on the other side of this car. Bo's still armed though, standing next to him with his bow clamped in his right hand. Luke points over to the back seat of the cruiser as a fine place for the weapon to get placed. It may not be his idea of a genuinely wise action, but Bo does it. Followed by Enos, who must've slipped up behind them in the absence of immediate danger. Deputy hangs close, like he's on pins and needles waiting for Luke's next order, but there isn't one. Negotiating a peaceful end to this thing has been about the extent of his thoughts for the last few minutes.

"Don't shoot, don't shoot," are Boss Hogg's squeals for mercy, such an unexpected, oddly welcome sound. Coming from the vicinity of Miss Minnie's house, forcing them all the squint to try to get a fix on the location.

Tap on his shoulder then, "There," Bo hisses, pointing off toward the back door of the house. Boy always has had keen eyesight, but this here is something his kid cousin might rather not have seen. Boss, downright frightened, pale without pretense, begging not to be hurt. The grip on Luke's shoulder tightens down – Bo wants to barrel into this head first.

Sucking gasp from behind them; Enos catching a drift of what's going on. Rosco comes out next, hands up and hiccupping his protests, but it's pointless. Guns at their backs and men hiding behind them. Hickman, dark and low, Rollo looming, others unknown or unrecognized, uncountable in the dark. Too many for him and Bo alone; even throwing Cooter and Enos into the mix might not be enough to take all of them, and that doesn't take into account the guns.

"All right now," comes from that huddle of men near Miss Minnie's house. Hickman, most likely, taking charge. "Here's what you want to do." Want. Funny word, want. Filled with menace and threat and whatever it is that Hickman's about to suggest, Luke damn sure doesn't _want_ to do it. "Back off, all of you. Away from those cars and into the trees. And you don't want to be making any quick moves, either, or fatty and pipsqueak here will be paying the price for your foolishness."

Yep, he was right, he doesn't want to do it. But he does, they all do. Because Hickman is the real thing, everything Boss Hogg pretends at but fails to be. Ruthless, dirty-fighting, dangerous. Where Boss blanches at violence, Hickman romances it like a long lost lover.

"Keep stepping," the Claridge Commissioner advises as he advances, shadows starting to claim his face as he gets away from the light of the house. Soon the whole bunch of them will be engulfed in the dark, and the Duke boys' chances of—

There's a scream then, high and heartrending. Barely a pause, and then there's another one. Heads turn, guns lose track of what they're meant to be pointing at, and he and Bo move.

Fast and low, they aim themselves at the leaders like a pair of heat-seeking missiles. Too fast, maybe, they get spotted, but there's that frozen moment of indecision – terrifying noise to the back (Daisy, doing the verbal equivalent of showing some leg, at least he hopes that's what she's doing, hopes those sounds aren't real) movement to the front – and it lasts just long enough to make a tackling grab at the bodies in front of him. No sense of good or bad, Hazzard or Claridge, his sole focus is on the dark, solid metal of the weapons, and how he needs to separate them from those hands.

Too much, too fast, movement in a blur, hard ground, soft bodies, flashes of light, grunts and hollers. Rolling and tumbling, fighting for control of one gun when there are so many around that could be fired off at any time. Daisy's still hollering, tone changed, more of a warning. Luke bears down with all his strength on the hand in front of him, squeezing at the wrist, thumb grating against tendons there until the gun skitters away and it's skin on skin. Young guy, strong enough, but Luke's got more muscle behind him. Enough to roll them one more time, flatten the guy to the dirt and show him the mercy of a knockout blow on the first punch.

Field of vision widening now that one gun is gone, and he can see what's got Daisy screaming like a blue jay with a threatened nest: old Enos over there trying to fight fair, even if it's two men ganged up against him. Eyes make a quick sweep of the melee, and he doesn't see any more weapons being brandished (hopes they're as gone as they seem to be) so he weaves his way around fighters until he gets to where the Hazzard Deputy is taking a reasonably unpleasant looking beating. Taps the bigger of the tag teaming fools that think it's fun to beat up on a smaller man, and offers him a punch for his efforts. Stumble, stagger, twisting rage and shock, but the man doesn't go down. Luke squares himself for what looks to be a pretty good fight.

Everything is his opponent turning, twisting, cocking that right arm back while he decides whether to take the punch or duck under it and let the fool stumble over his own—

"Luke!" fills his ear, then there's a fist filling his cheek with pain. His bell's been rung, but that doesn't matter, not in the face of that other thing. That distress call – that came from Bo.

Quick swing to disentangle himself from the guy he was so eager to fight only seconds ago. It connects, but not half solidly enough to end this thing.

"I got him," comes like words from heaven, even if it is just Cooter in his left ear. "You go on." And as if to clarify his point, the mechanic jumps into wrestling with the stranger in front of them with that odd, heavy-footed gait of his, leaving Luke to look after Bo.

Who, when he was drawing straws for who got to fight whom, chose the short one. Or the long, tall, heavy and immovable one: Rollo. Apparently the man has himself a gut of iron, if the way Bo's shaking out his hand is any indication. Slow, oversized fist comes swinging back in retaliation, creeping along at a pace that lets Bo duck under it but, "Luke!" he calls out again. Because eventually one of those punches is going to connect with its mark, and when it does, Bo's going to be in some serious pain.

Luke reckons on saving the day, figures Rollo might stand up to a cuff normally doled out in a bar fight but has no experience with a boxer. Pulls his punch to Rollo's gut anyway, habit or wisdom, hard to say which. Doesn't matter, big and ugly doesn't even muster a cough in response, not hardly the slightest wince. Looks over at Bo – _yeah, it's all right_ passes between them silently, because they have rules about this. Two-on-one isn't fair unless it is, unless the other guy is too big or too crazy for only one of them to handle.

Another sluggish roundhouse from Rollo that they both duck, then Bo's up, taking a swipe at the thug's chin. Doesn't seem to make much of a difference, but it's followed by Luke's jab to the eye, then Bo's elbow to the gut. The man stays standing, manages to cuff Bo's ear, but the next uppercut from Luke hurts him. Stumbling back one-two steps and it might just turn out that Rollo goes down from his own backward-drifting momentum.

Waiting, watching the slow motion act in front of him, and quick movement in the background catches Luke's eye. Hickman waddling as fast as his stubby legs will carry him, up the hill to their right and halfway to the tree line already. Without consulting his brain, his legs start to follow. With a half a dozen running steps he could tackle the man, but – "Luke!" – Bo has just taken another swipe from the remarkably recovered Rollo. Nothing serious, probably. No visible blood, and the goon doesn't seem too steady how he stands. Bo could take him alone, most likely. Except (_until this thing's cleared up_ _I ain't leaving your side_) for promises made, a vow to be kept.

Hickman may just get away to bust and detain him another day. And he reckons he'll have to cross that bridge when he comes to it, but for now there's Rollo to be dealt with. Heart-stopping cross to the man's chest as revenge for the way he hit Bo, then his cousin gets in a good shot to the nose. Makes Rollo grunt, makes him spit and sputter, makes him snort and drop his guard so Luke can deliver the knockout punch. Teeter, totter, tip and tumble, grunt and groan and shudder, then finally, stillness.

"That's right, you march, mister." Daisy, and her tone of voice just about makes Luke turn around and start marching in self-defense.

"Daisy?" Bo breathes heavily into the suddenly quiet air. The fight is over, apparently. Either that or there's been a silently and unanimously called respite, an early evening siesta.

He follows Bo's gaze across the shadows in front of them to where their stick-skinny female cousin is shoving a repentant looking Boss Hickman, with hands his held high, out from between the trees into the scant lighting of the clearing. Funny hobble to her walk and if Hickman has hurt her—

"All right, Daisy," Enos soothes and that boy might just be braver than he or Bo has ever given him credit for. No one should ever go toward Daisy, not when her hair flies loose around her tightly pinched face, her eyes are wild and her mouth still mutters things about how Hickman tried to hurt her _family_, and nobody but _nobody_ gets away with that. "I got him."

And as the deputy turns the Claridge County Boss around to cuff him, Luke can see why his female cousin's gait was awkward. The heel of her left shoe was pressed into Hickman's back as if it were the barrel of a gun. Now that she's got no reason to hold it up anymore, the girl drops it to the ground and slides her foot back into it.

Tired, everyone here is exhausted from the fight, from the day of siege, and in some cases, from the large quantities of alcohol they must have consumed before showing up here in Whispering Hollow. Still, Jesse manages to waddle over to his niece with congratulations for a job well done, and Cooter whoops in appreciation of her brilliance. Bo catches his breath long enough to shake Luke's hand (because there was a fight and at the end of it all the Duke boys were still standing – tradition demands a handshake in there somewhere) but his brain hasn't quite recovered yet. Or maybe it's his mouth.

"Daisy?" comes out in utter disbelief and with a complete absence of wisdom or even blonde charm. "Daisy caught Hickman? With a shoe?"

Wild eyes, squinting down on his baby cousin, and Luke reckons he ought to protect Bo. Except doing so would only rile Daisy further.

"_Men!_" she storms, but it could have been worse. Could still get worse, if he's fool enough to open his mouth. So he doesn't. Or at least no more than it takes to offer a lopsided smile and a shoulder shrug while he hisses at Bo to hush up now. Because neither of them is exactly hankering to find shells in their scrambled eggs for the next seven mornings in a row.


	18. Mistakes Forgotten and Forgiven

_**Author's Note: **Hey y'all! Thanks for sticking with me through another one, and special thanks to those who reviewed. Hope it was as much fun to read as it was to write! Catch you on the flip side!_

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**Chapter Eighteen – Mistakes Forgotten and Forgiven**

Corners, bright or dark, but small spaces all the same. Nooks, niches, places where whispers are enough, where only twosomes and small cliques meet. Where boasting has few witnesses, and certainly none that can refute what's being told as the gospel truth by braggarts too big for their breeches. But the woods in Hazzard are only so thick, the gaps between here and there only so wide. Eventually, like everything else in this tiny town, tall tales begin to collide.

Scoffs and smirks, snickers and _questions_. Oh those last ones, they're the worst. Meant to trap a man in his own lies with a triumphant a-ha moment just waiting to happen. Snarls and growls, but in the end everyone has to live with everyone else, and some manner of peace has to be found. Even if it means that crazy wagers, made in the presence of mason jars filled with white lightning, have to be paid off in chickens and goats and prized afghans knitted by someone's grandmother.

But it's all part of the system of trade in Hazzard County, just another week in the life. Because those same chickens given over to the Smiths will be used to feed the Joneses when they come a-calling for Sunday dinner, and the knitter of that afghan is grandma to half the town anyway. If it's not an exactly stable or serene way of living life, well no one's ever known it any other way. Every last resident has seen the others laugh and cry, fight against locusts and revenuers, every single one of them has pointed out into the dusty road in front of their house in glee and amusement when that dust-kicking orange car – the one owned by those boys that really have earned the right to gloat about their escapades, but won't bother to – careens past their front gates. And then asked someone to pass the lemonade, it looks like it'll be a hot one today.

* * *

It's almost a shame that the State Police had to get involved. Arrests and official charges, and there probably wasn't any better way around it all. Impartial parties to take statements, to sift out the good guys from the bad, to figure out who was aggrieved and who was the aggressor. And without the state boys, the charges against Luke might never have been dropped. Even if Sweetwater's Chief Lacey was all apologies afterward, swearing up and down that he never would have stopped the boy, much less looked in the truck, if the Claridge law hadn't asked him to. Professional courtesy on a day when Hickman swore he didn't have the manpower to catch the boy himself. Begging a favor of the Sweetwater chief, asking him to do what he otherwise never would have. A set up, but Luke had given all the appearances of knowingly transporting moonshine, and there had been a stolen-vehicle complaint against him from Claridge, so what else could Lacey do?

They all shook hands over it, mistakes forgotten and forgiven, Luke clapping the poor man on the shoulder and inviting him to dinner some Sunday. Bo might have been a bit less thrilled about it, but then his guilt and protectiveness hadn't yet faded away.

It ruined Rosco's whole night – or so he said, but not a one of them really believed it – when the State Troopers showed up to take his bust away from him. Yanked the whole bunch of invaders from Claridge, or as many as they could catch anyway, off to Atlanta. Not before, of course, getting statements from the local law, complete with ijits and wijits. Saved old Rosco the effort of locking them up himself, some dozen-plus men in three cells with two cots between them. Or maybe there were only two cells – the Hazzard sheriff kept muttering something about Bo Duke breaking the lock on one of them. Anyway, more men than places to put them by a long shot, and then there would have been the babysitting to consider. Long night of sitting up and watching that no one tried to escape or kill anyone else, so when the sheriff heard that his deputy had called in the state cops to handle the bust, he put on a good show about being upset, but Jesse figured he'd just as soon go home and sleep it all off. All of them would.

Besides, the sheriff had already proven himself a spectacular failure when it came to handling Hickman. Why, he'd marched right up to Minnie's house, full to the brim as it was with scheming Claridge men, and hollered something along the lines of, "Freeze, freeze, I've got you now," until they'd come outside, captured and gagged him just to save their own sanity. From there he'd been dragged inside to sit at the dining room table next to Boss Hogg, with gun trained on him while Hickman and company gloated about their success in taking over Hazzard. The ransom on Hogg would be a nice little bit of icing on the cake, might buy Hickman another shiny black car to drive around in, but what he really figured on was milking Hazzardites for all they were worth (which wasn't all that much, but greed was the pastime of fools anyway). A scheme Boss Hogg could be proud of, even if he'd blanch and back step the minute he realized that in order to enact it, he'd have to hurt people. Kill them, really, like Hickman was going to have to kill Hogg, and now Coltrane, too.

Evil plotters, and turning them over to the state police left the Hazzard sheriff with nothing to do but fuss over his little fat buddy. It was a cheek pinching, nonsense-chattering reunion. And it seemed that old J.D. must really have been scared this time, because it took a full three minutes of being poked, prodded and generally picked at before he dismissed Rosco with a series of _dats_ and an admonishment to go somewhere else and act like a sheriff or something.

But it's not sympathy for the muttering sheriff that makes Jesse halfway regret the need for state police involvement. It's that the investigation has gone beyond the local realm, where at least he might have had some access to the accused. Fulton County's got the biggest claim on all of them now, and as far as he knows that's where they've spent the last two nights. Just as caged as Luke was, and he reckons that the most of them deserve it.

But then there's Minnie. Hard to say, even now, what her role was. He only had a few minutes with her that night; after the fight was over, while the Hazzard law and the suddenly forming militia of moonshine runners (some of whom had liquor on their breath and no business wielding guns or driving cars) held the Claridge interlopers at bay by corralling them like cattle in the clearing, then forming a human fence to contain them. Mostly Minnie sat with the rest of them, small body, big eyes, quiet. But for a moment, when he squatted down and spoke softly to her, she answered back. Clarified nothing, spun her words up into the same circles she ever had, and it was just as frustrating as it had always been. Confounding woman, deliberately dense, never giving him the slightest inkling whether she was a knowing part of Hickman's plan or whether she was as much a victim as Luke.

He'd assist her any way he could, if she'd give him half a reason. Heck, he might just go ahead and help her anyway. But he'll likely never get any kind of a straight answer out of her about what, exactly, she thought she was doing in helping to set up Jesse's oldest nephew.

Who really ought to be on the receiving end of a few good lashings, now that the story behind the mayday call has come out. Smirking little confessions about deliberate disobedience, but that boy doesn't fool Jesse one little bit. Twenty years and then some of raising Luke, and his uncle can see the way those eyes dart away when he gets to the sticky parts. Admissions of transgressions that start with leaving Cooter's garage and end with the fool marching right up into a nest of guns. Boy was safer locked up in Claridge.

Of course, he didn't perform that ridiculous little maneuver all on his own, no, he had to go dragging his youngest cousin right into the thick of it with him. Bo's hide ought to have a few welts on it too, for going along on one of Luke's dang-fool schemes. Except then he'd have to take his whip to Daisy and himself, and the whole rest of the town too, because at least once a week the whole bunch of them lets his oldest nephew talk them into some crazy stunt or other.

So he has settled, instead, for knowing his nephews are safe and healthy – for now, until the next time they go off and risk their necks.

Besides, Daisy has been punishing them just fine. In fact, there's his Luke right now, shoving eggs around his plate, and after only one bite, too.

"What's the matter boy, you sick?" Jesse asks, hand reaching for Luke's forehead, just for good measure.

"No, sir," gets accompanied by a ducked head, because illness has never touched Luke Duke, not once. He's never spent the day in bed aching and groaning, sweating out a fever. No sir, not that boy, too stubborn for germs to take hold in him, and if he might have been coughing, sneezing and warm to the touch here and there, well that's just a tickle in his throat, an itchy nose, and a sweaty day all conspiring against him. (But Luke's not sick this morning – Jesse knows it and Luke knows he knows it. And that ducked head, that just leaves those dark curls vulnerable to an affectionate old man's fingers. Boy doesn't let himself be touched half as much as his younger cousins do, but Jesse reckons he's earned the right to lay a gentle hand on his oldest from time to time. Instead of whipping him like he ought to.)

"All right then, eat up," he instructs, gets a sour face in response.

"What's the matter, sugar?" Daisy chimes in from where she's standing at the far end of the table, hot skillet in one hand, spatula in the other. "You ain't hungry?"

Luke's an honest boy; Jesse raised him right. And even if he wasn't, there's not a one of them in the room that hasn't been hearing his stomach grumble all the time his mouth's been staying resolutely closed against his breakfast.

"Or maybe you don't like them eggs?" And that, right there, is the crux of it.

"I like the eggs just fine, Daisy." Of course he does. It's those onions that got sliced up and scrambled into the meal on his plate that are bugging Luke. Boy never has been partial to the things, though everyone else in the house loves them. Sauces and stews, those he can pick them out of. But when it comes to how they're chopped so finely then cooked right into the eggs, well the boy's got the choice of choking down onions or not eating anything. Clearly, he's chosen the latter.

"No you don't," the girl points out logically, as Bo starts eyeballing the mess of food still there on his big cousin's plate. If Luke doesn't want it, Bo's not too shy to make a grab for it himself. Until Jesse gets hold of him by the forearm, that is. Tight squeeze, _don't even think about it_ in the glare he gives his youngest. Manners – they're the first necessity for eating at Jesse Duke's table. "I must not have done a good job of shopping this week," Daisy sighs. "Didn't get enough of your favorite kinds of foods." Sorrowful little look on her face, but before Luke can properly protest about how she did just fine, it brightens. "That's okay, Luke. You can come shopping with me this morning! That way I can't get it wrong again!"

"Well, now, Daisy," comes the sputtering response. "You do just fine. I was just waiting for the eggs to cool." As if to prove his point, Luke gets himself a forkful, wincing slightly against the notion of putting it into his mouth.

But it never gets there, now when a resourceful Daisy puts the spatula down to snatch the plate out from underneath him.

"Now, Luke," she insists, "I wouldn't hear of it. You're coming with me."

Air, nonsense sounds, attempts to explain escape from Luke's lips and he halfway resembles Rosco like that. Looks over to Bo for support or suggestions or maybe just in hopes that the boy will suddenly say he hears sirens and they'd better be diving out the bedroom windows and running along now, but his cousin is of no use, snickering there behind his hand.

"Oh, no," is Daisy's interjection. "Bo can't come with us. He's got to stay here and wax my car. Uncle Jesse," she adds overtop of the protesting that's coming from both of her cousins now. "Can me and Luke borrow the pickup?"

He smiles for his kids, tight little look to stop the sputtering. "That sounds just fine, Daisy."

* * *

Stubborn. Stalwart and silent, that's Luke, so sure those behaviors show his strength, when all they show is that he's just as much of a jackass as he's always been. Same clammed up cousin that came home from war, uninterested or unwilling to talk about any of it. Other than to say that the food wasn't good and the drink even worse (but then most Marines weren't reared on moonshine, so they didn't know any better) and that he'd happily dig irrigation ditches over latrines, any day. Nope there was nothing to talk about with Vietnam and there's nothing to discuss when it comes to the time he spent locked up in Claridge either. If Luke just happens to stick a little closer to family, to smile more often than he sneers, to be the tiniest bit less pessimistic, well, that's all coincidence, surely.

Useful coincidence, because it's helped Bo to keep an eye on him. Not, of course, that Luke needs any such thing, not that he'd been scared or worried or even the slightest bit lonely up there in Claridge. Not that he'd been half-crazed, caught singing made-up songs to himself or running out to confront armed Claridge lawmen, not that he'd been sleep deprived and yet spent his first three nights at home largely sleepless. Nothing had affected him in any way, and that was why Bo kept his antenna tuned in Luke's direction.

And really, that makes it his oldest cousin's fault that they're in their current predicament. Too smart, certainly, to just sit still and wait a minute or two while Bo negotiated the payment for a fan belt with Cooter (all right, so it turned into five minutes, what with how Dobro was lounging there on the mechanic's desk, and how long had it been since that boy came out to play? Not since his sudden marriage a couple of months back), no, old Luke had to flirt. Had to get up from the bed of the pickup where Bo had left him slouching, tapping out time with incongruously impatient fingers on his leg. Watching traffic, both vehicular and foot, and muttering at Bo about not taking all day. Lazy cousin, pretending he had someplace better to be, when all they'd really planned was to fix up the General, then test him out on the grapevine. And it must have been pretty close to the second that Bo shrugged his shoulders and walked off to deal with Cooter that Luke started trouble. Up and out into the street where he probably just leaned up against a telephone pole and flashed those blue eyes of his. Staring, maybe winking or smiling, and girls started tripping over their own two feet, heads turned to stare at the Duke boy, because that's what girls did. Even if they were walking arm in arm with another man.

Snake charmer, that's what his oldest cousin has always been, and the more girls dancing to the tune of his song, the more men get ready to start fights. Hasn't ever helped that old Luke never pays the guys a bit of mind, even as he's stealing the girls right out from under their noses. Must've gotten pretty ugly out there, glowers turning to complaints bordering on threats. Long about the point it was looking like a fight about to happen, Rosco must've reckoned he ought to take a stroll around the square. By the time Bo walked away from the tall tales getting told in the garage – stories about vehicular feats that Dobro couldn't pull off on his best days behind the wheel, all of which took place close to a year ago, before he settled down and left the dirt track circuit – there was a blur of movement. What wanted to build into Chip Davis and two cronies Bo knew by sight, but not by name, ganging up on Luke (but they'd be fools to do that, because as isolated as the oldest of the Duke clan looked there on the street, he was never far from family and friends who wouldn't _ever_ let him stand alone in a fight) became nothing more than boys scattering from the call of "Freeze, freeze, I got you now."

"Let's go, Bo," Luke hollers from where he flies by in a flash, running for the passenger side of the pickup. Nothing to do but follow after him, head shaking all the way about bossy cousins. Up into the driver's seat, foot on the clutch and ignition cranking. And cranking, finally catching before stalling. He glowers at the truck for how it has betrayed him, hears Rosco's screaming voice still coming at them. Heck, the fight never even got started and all the would-be combatants scattered to the winds, but the Sheriff's making a beeline for Dukes. Figures.

His eyes raise to Luke, caught somewhere between scolding and asking what his great plan is now, and get met by a wild grin. Genuine smile, cutting crinkles around those glowing eyes, and Bo stops caring what happens next. This right here is the boy he grew up with, the fun-lover that the Marines tried to squelch, that Claridge County tried to lock away. Luke, as he's always loved him best.

Rosco manages to stumble himself right on up to the pickup, yanking Bo's door open, and grabbing for his wrist. "All right, Bo Duke, I got you now!"

Ought to be mad at his cousin and the law both for this predicament, but he can't seem to muster even the tiniest bit of ire. Finds himself smirking right back into the sheriff's egg-sucking grin even as he shakes those fumbling fingers away from his arm.

"Now, now!" Rosco repeats, happy little words. "You're under arrest. You just, you just—"

"What's the charge, Rosco?" Luke asks, same as he'd ask what today's special is at the diner. Curiosity, but nothing close to worry in his voice.

"Reckless endangerment." Wow, that's got the be the longest pair of words the man has ever strung together without sticking in a random ijit or two. Must be reading his manual and practicing his vocabulary.

"I ain't endangered anyone today, Bo, how about you?" Oh, the innocence that Luke exudes with that one.

"Heck no," he answers back, just like Luke, Rosco, and the Lord above know he's going to. "I ain't even had a chance to be reckless."

"Well, it's early yet," Luke consoles. "Tell you what, Rosco. Give us an hour or two to get warmed up and we'll be sure to recklessly endanger someone, all right?"

"Gyu," the sheriff answers as every cell in his brain goes to working out whether or not to accept Luke's proposal. They should be running now, really ought to be getting out of here as quickly as their legs will carry them, but the two of them just sit there, watching wheels turn – slowly – in Rosco's head.

"No it ain't all right!" Good, a decision's been reached over there by the brilliant man in the blue outfit. Rosco, that is, not Luke. Who just keeps sitting there. "You're under arrest!" gets screamed directly into his ear, spit flying right behind.

"You heard him, Bo." Hell, half of Hazzard heard him. And here come Cooter and Dobro to watch the fun. Or get in on it, whichever way it happens to work out. "You're under arrest."

"You too, Luke Duke!" again, hollered into Bo's ear, and that doesn't seem exactly fair. "Just you, just," Rosco's muttering, but what's more important is that he's got ahold of Bo's wrist again. "Get out here now, ijit, you just," and what's more than that, Luke's shoving at him from behind, nudging him right off the seat and into the sheriff's hands. "I got you, I got you!" Seems like Rosco hasn't been this happy since the day the bakery got stuck with those special order baked cookies for Joellen Arnold's wedding that never happened, and handed them out to passersby (which mostly consisted of the local sheriff and the local mechanic) for free.

And true enough, Rosco's got them. Luke slides out behind him and offers his left hand for cuffing, which means Bo's got to give up his right or expect to walk backwards all the way to the jail.

"Hey," Cooter intervenes. Finally. It was starting to look like their friends would let them get arrested without putting up a fight. "What's going on here? Rosco, what're you arresting them for? They ain't done nothing."

"That's 'they haven't done anything,' Cooter," Rosco corrects like a fussy schoolmarm. "If they ain't done nothing, that means they done something, and that's why I'm arresting them, kee!" Man is downright gleeful about his logic.

"Reckless endangerment," Luke explains with a solid nod. "That's what he's arresting us for." Cooter's mouth pops open with the intent of saying – well something, and knowing Cooter, it could be just about anything – but it dies right there in his throat when Luke starts marching them resolutely toward the courthouse. Apparently, they are submitting to this arrest. Bo's as floored as any of them, but the pace his cousin's setting alongside him brooks no argument. For now.

Once they're tidily locked in a cell, he reckons he's got a few choice words for the man about what his fine scheming mind is up to this time. Luke's the smart one, as he'll be glad to tell anyone that asks, and Bo's just pretty, but it doesn't take a big brain to recognize the foolishness of letting themselves be locked up. Cuffs unlocked and yanked off them, but that door slams shut with a solid clang.

"And Rosco's done fixed the dang lock," Bo has to whisper, because the sheriff in question is only about fifteen feet away, sitting at the typewriter with his tongue hanging out, hunting and pecking at an incident report featuring two recklessly endangering Duke boys. But not before he locked the two of them into the upstairs jail, which he had Arne the locksmith in to fix the day after Bo taught him the ease of escaping this particular cell.

Same crazy grin on his cousin's face that talked him right into this mess without ever saying a single word. "He done fixed the lock," Luke mumbles back at him, gently jiggling the door to show how the tongue lays solid in the groove there. No amount of pulling or pushing will jar it free, but that doesn't make old Luke frown and get grumpy like usual. Because, apparently, "But the spring is still exposed." Quietly, quietly, his cousin pulls his knife, which Rosco never has figured out that he ought to take away when he arrests them, out from its sheath on his belt. Points the blade at the exposed hardware in question, then silently starts to pick at it. Bo listens for the click, counts three in his head, and gets ready to run.


End file.
